Like The Rifle: Act I
by Cakehole Cat
Summary: Sam & Dean are in Worcester Co, MA, on the trail of a Mystery Illness, with some link to strange behaviour in the local wildlife. Meanwhile, a pair of British hunters are working the same beat and there are vampires and worse afoot in smalltown MA.
1. Prologue: Big Bad

**Prologue - Big Bad**

_**Wullamanic, Early October, Year of Our Lord, 1674.**_

Everyone in the tiny hamlet heard it: the scream.

A keening howl. Hurtling into the air and hurling against the banked, roiling clouds, obscuring the night sky, which almost seemed to recoil in shock and flee, like spreading wings, away from the tiny village. As they feathered and spread, as if a giant unseen had reached down and parted them in the middle, like Moses and the ocean, the full moon revealed itself. It was red, as if bathed in blood. Despite this, it outshone the vast swathe of stars, twinkling innocently, which it was hanging amongst – shone brighter than any human-made light yet made, only to be outdone by the sun. Or by the lightning. It forked and fizzed from the thundering, bruised clouds, lashing its tongue at the earth and sparking up forest-fires wherever it hit – only a matter of miles away. The moon, in her cloud-hung stage, curled its light underneath the shuddering storm head and revealed the haze of rain, leagues away across the rolling usually-idyllic hills, curtains sweeping in front of and past each other, like actors passing, trying to attract an audience. A tiny apocalypse.

A night, in short, for any honest, God-fearing person to be safely tucked away, inside.

Which isn't to say that Fear did not stretch its back and possessively, go stalking those hills, that night...

The girl whimpered and wept as she staggered down the hillside, slipping on the mud despite how carefully she tried to flee. Fear caught as a moan, in her chest, as her dresses caught on _yet_ another barbed branch – even now, she was not yet used to this clothing. She tore at with desperately scrabbling fingers, her hands were shaking too much in the cold, frozen to numbness by the hammering rain, sheeting down and sluicing through the little white cap on her head, black wavy locks spilling out from under it. "If any woman shall not have her hair tied up, but hang lose, or be cut as a man's hair, she shall pay five shillings" – but she could barely spare a thought for such rules, all she could do was stare, fearfully, over her shoulder – as she ran.

The lightning came in bursts, flogging its light across the tiny village in brief harsh flickers. It illuminated...

The girl: her torn white cape, flowing and fluttering from her back, turned to a brilliant liquid-metal sheen by the moon: all except for the darker parts. Which gleamed red.

The knife: dripping blood, gripped in her hand as if her life depended on it – which it did. Light skittering down its edge, as if afraid.

The girl: skirts billowing outwards as she leapt from the crest of a mound, propelling herself down the hill-side with no thought for her own safety.

The girl: sprinting into the tiny collection of rough villages.

The girl: reaching the biggest long house and throwing herself at the pliant, wicker-like doors, hammering on them even as sobs wracked her, _screaming_ for help.

The Native American preacher: opening the door and staring, in utter consternation, at his paritioner.

The girl: fainting dead away on the steps, as the rain reached her, and fell from far above...

The preacher's wife, bending daintily on knee, eventually brought her round, and she came-to to find herself stretched out on one of the bumpy, fur-strewn pallets – which ran along the inner walls of the longhouse, raised off the floor. There were swathes of braided corn, and squashes, from the recent harvest hanging above and wafting their scent down to her, from the rope-tied rafters overhead. Seeming stronger in the confined space, the smell of smoke stung in her nostrils, and wet hide – from the odd splashes of rainwater filtering through the smoke-hole in the arched, barrel-like ceiling.

There was also a raft of curious villager's heads, bobbing into view, looming out of the firelight – men with their hats on, women with their caps, like good little Christians. They were standing in a crowd around her, fascinated by her agitated state yet trying to avert their gaze, somewhat, on account of her half-wild appearance. What followed was a conversation, hurriedly relayed between she and the preacher, in her native tongue – Algonquian – which the officious little man forgave, despite her conversion.

'Child, what on earth happened to you?'

'It was a- a wolf! A monster! God save us-'

'Calm down, girl, calm down! What monster?'

'A- a wolf! It... It came so close to-'

She broke down sobbing again, and found herself wrapped about by the preacher's wife's arms, making comforting noises. The preacher tutted impatiently, a twitch flickering under his eye. He insisted she continue, explain herself or risk a fine.

'I... I only meant to... to lend my Grandmother some sustenance, during the storm!'

She told them how she had decided to brave what had only been a light shower when she had set out, from their little domed wetu, their wigwam, to come down to some friends in the village – who had promised she and her grandmother food – and when, bringing it back, how she had... had heard It. The thing. Following her through the woods. Night had been gathering fast, leeching the suns dying rays from between the trees like a rake across crops. She had hoped to reach her wigwam _first_, to warn her grandmother, waiting inside – but had gone inside to find it empty, vacant. She told how she, despite her fear, had _had_ to go in search for her: no aged lady should be asked to endure a storm such as this. Hoping she had gone to the village, she had decided to come here-

'Oh, you poor, brave child!' The preacher's wife cried, throwing her arms about her again.

'But the knife you bear!' the preacher snapped, determined to have the truth. 'What of the _knife_?'

Then she had calmed herself, one last time, to tell of how she had heard its panting, leering over her shoulder, heard its footfalls once more, in the forest behind her. The villagers listened with round eyes and baited breath, staring in horror as she relayed her tale: of slowing down, right down, almost a stop, and waiting until the very thing was upon her... Before _whirling_ round, and, with the knife she had brought in her striking out at it. That had been when it howled – the scream they had all heard (though none had ventured out to find its source), and lumbered off into the calling darkness, trailing blood – even as she was – while its lust for it abated. She had, in one foul swoop, cleaved its left front-paw from its foreleg! Though wrath was sinful, she confessed, she could not stop herself: there was such evil in it...

'Oh sir!' the girl cried finally, grasping at his arm in supplication. 'You _must_ find my grandmother! I fear for her safety, oh, saints preserve me!' She just had strength left to ward herself against the evil eye, before slumping unconscious...

A different kind of light lit the tiny village, rain still hammering at the collection of rough buildings – longhouses and wigwams – which, bedraggled, huddled together like chickens in the coop under its onslaught. It was the light of torches, lit with tinder as much as with zeal, fighting with the lightning for dominance over the faces of their excited bearers. Brethren, darkly carved in the flickering orange glow, set out from the longhouse, chanting gospel and verse, and sounding like a pack of hounds, baying for the hunt – as, indeed, they were. The men with flintlocks waving in the air, rifles and pistols – reverting to their ancient Native roots, without realizing, in their passion.

They swarmed the trees – in the area she had described – squinting in vain through the pouring rain, which ran off the brims of their hats. The forest floor, where only rushing mud and twisting roots could be found, surrendering nothing to them. That was when they heard the second scream: long, tortured, mewling, it fragmented and died weakly, something in pain, pitying itself. The village men followed the sound, guns in hand, to where it began: inside the domed wigwam of the girl and her grandmother, where it stood in a little clearing. The rain was running in rivulets down its domed sides, separating into funnels which hit the ground either side so hard they bounced.

Their only clue was the trail of blood, great puddles of it, dimpled with the downpour – a trail which lead right to the door: a black, impenetrable hole in the wigwam's side, a gaping wound, just _inviting _any who ventured inside to never come out again. A door from which came echoed those _dreadful_ cries. The bravest of the men stepped forth, through the rain, avoiding the puddles with his buckled shoes and ducked inside, to see: the Grandmother. She was slumped against the far wall, moaning, shaking and weeping with agony, drenched in blood, and clutching to her breast the mangled stump of her own left arm.

The other men assembled, in stunned, sickened silence, staring pitilessly down at her as each man put two and two together, in his head. The wolf, the woman, the poor scared child. But it was the preacher who, with tears of shock and fervor shining his eyes, first uttered their shared thought aloud – in a hoarse-whisper:

'**_WITCH_**.'

By rights, she was supposed to have a trial – but there was something _in_ the villagers that night, some kind of impetus drove them on, past human rights and cold logic. Her grand-daughter arrived, holding a fresh cloak up to cover her head, just as they dragged the old woman, begging for her life, to an apple tree. She was just in time to see them lower the noose – hastily-made, from the very lengths they had to used to hang corn, in their longhouses, down in the village – over her head. She was just in time to feel herself lanced through, with her grand-mother's black eyes, as she – searching the assembled crowd for a single trace of pity – turned them on her.

'_Behold!_' she had shrieked, in a Native language they all affected not to understand.

She screamed as they forced her to stand on a stool, its three legs squashing circles in the mud.

'_BEHOLD! I send you forth as lambs among wolves! I swear, you shall live to regret this! YOU SHALL ALL LIVE TO REGRET-_'

Which was when the preacher, snarling, kicked the stool away – and the red moon looked on as her body fell with a jerk. The very instant she hit the bottom curve of her fall, all the fires, and all the candles, in the village and in the hands of the villagers: snuffed out. In the same instant, lightning struck close by; and where it touched, a fire struck up. The tree it had hit burst into flames and broke in two, one half felled with a wooden screech of snapping branches, bending in its wake. The villagers scattered in fear, the menfolk running forwards to see if any assistance could be given to the rain, in dousing it.

The girl did not run. She was still transfixed by the twitching body, swinging in the warm-choked storm breath of wind, dry between the rain, the body whose iron-gray hair was lit up white by the inconstant storm.

And that very night the Ware river, running along the south of the town, burst its banks – its waters tossed to a tumultuous sea, pounded by the raindrops, turning its usually-smooth surface to a rough pebble-dash, like metal under a smith's hammer – and washed away half the town...


	2. Chapter 1: The Licked Hand

**Chapter 1 - The Licked Hand & Sam's Catholic Tastes**

_**Hardwick, Worcester County, present-day Massachusetts**_

_One week ago..._

Cathy yawned widely, standing on the porch – her steps hesitant, to allow her the full enjoyment of the movement – before dropping to the garden path. She carried a bulging trash bag in her perfectly-manicured hand, and picked her way daintily down the path which ran beside the tall, white-picket fence, along one side of the big, equally well-kept lawns. They stretched before an intimidatingly Victorian house, all blue and white painted wood, bay windows, gothic towers. All immaculate. Cathy sniffed against the cold as she walked, looking blankly round at it all – gardening wasn't really her thing, but she could appreciate the prettiness of the neatly-clipped shrubs, n' stuff.

Eventually she reached the bottom of the garden, where the white wooden fence bent round in one last wall, briefly pausing to become a tall wooden gate. She pushed through it, and found herself standing in a rough dirt track, the other side of which loomed a patch of forest. Cathy shivered. Eww. Forests were creepy.

She turned to her left and walked down the track a short way, where it (and the forest) gave way onto a stretch of road, where you could get to the rest of the 'burbs. Unfortunately, that meant the track had to be as wide as their garden – which was, like, huge. It was also where the garbage-men picked up their trash, tomorrow morning, and the reason _she _got stuck dumping it there. Cathy dropped her bag, nose wrinkling in distaste, and turned to make her way back to the garden-gate.

Halfway there, some instinct made her eyes wander sideways to the forest, where – she almost tripped – another pair of eyes stared back. In what little brain-space she kept devoted to the study zoology (which did not include how to spell it), Cathy knew that dogs – even ones that big, and that black – were not supposed to have red eyes. Her pulse quickened, and her steps followed, as she sped up, hoping to get to the gate before _it _could decide it liked the taste of cheer-leader. She heard a rough grunt of annoyance, from it, and sped up to a full-spring as the sound of pounding paws suddenly started, hammering the ground towards her.

They were getting closer, closer, almost on her- but she was at the gate! Cathy burst through it, spun around (trying not to look up at the black shape, inches away) swung it shut and hastily shut the latch – just as something thudded into the other side. Terrified, she backed away, watching the shadows (just visible in the dimming light) as they shifted underneath, at its movement. The banging had stopped, but she could still hear its gravelly breath, God, she could just _imagine_ the slobber, hanging in hot threads from its jowls, hitting its huge paws. Why was it after _her? _Why was something like that even allowed _outside?_

A thought occurred to her: the yard gate, and the latch, weren't very strong. If that thing tried to push at it hard enough- then another thought occurred to Cathy, one which made her wish she didn't have, like, _such_ a good imagination, which was this: that big dogs, as big as this thing, could _jump really high. _Oh God, this thing knew too – as soon as the thought reared its ugly head, she heard paws receding, and them hammering up to the fence, which shook under another blow as the dog thudded furiously against it.

Cathy backed away, whimpering desperately. The banging was getting louder, the shakes more violent, with each successive hit. She was staggering, stumbling, something hooked under her ankle and Cathy fell backwards, screaming, arms flailing, she hit the cold ground hard, the night sky, which pinwheeled past as she well, jarring in her vision. Something was falling on her from above, a black shape getting bigger and bigger and-

'_Catherine_!' someone barked.

She writhed around, frantically, on the floor, twisting her head around to look at the house. An old woman was standing there in her dressing-gown, leaning on her walking stick. Her hair, iron-gray but for a black streak, was done up a loose bun. Odd strands of it were erratically on end, highlighted by the light streaming through the glass door, behind her, making her look even older. She puckered her wrinkle-mapped mouth after speaking, sucking her false-teeth around under her gums as if relishing the chance to be loudly forthright.

'Grams!' Cathy cried in relief, using her Grandmother's pet name. 'Grandma Rowan! There's, like, this _huge_ dog chasing me-'

'Don't be foolish,' came the reply. 'There's only us.'

Cathy looked around. She was right. There was no sound, no sign, of the big black dog – no hammering at the gate.

'Wow...'

'Come on inside,' her Grand-ma ordered, beady eyes pursed up in a disapproving frown. 'Come on. Now.'

Still lying, prostrate, on the ground, Cathy looked around to see where she was. She was underneath the gnarled old apple-tree, at the bottom of their garden – the black thing which had fallen from the sky was an apple. Creepy-ass thing! Disgruntled, Cathy pushed herself to her feet, bemoaning the grass stains now smearing her pants, and clopped back up the house with a dramatic sigh of complaint. Her Grandmother clasped a ropey, liver-spotted hand over her shoulder as she approached – pinching – she used Cathy as an added aid to her walking back inside.

'Seriously, Grams, you should've _seen_ the size of this thing!' Cathy continue. 'I thought it was gonna, like, _kill _me!'

'I,' Grams announced, 'am going to bed.' Once they'd shut the door behind them. As if to say: _And that's an end to it._

Cathy, robbed of an opportunity to tell her story and garner some sympathy, sighed again, and nodded.

'O-kay Grams.' She sing-sung.

She guessed it'd just have to wait for her friends.

They both moved through the grand, old lounge, which was where the French windows opened out from, to the door into the hall – Grams took a left up the heavy wood staircase, each step creaking as loudly as her old bones, and Cathy went right, into the kitchen. Sighing with the kind of martyrdom only a teenager could understand, she started banging around in there, cleaning up, putting plates away. Once done, she wheeled around, to leave, and stopped dead.

On the threshold, just before the kitchen linoleum changed to carpet, showing up starkly against the white linoleum, in the harsh kitchen light: was a pair of paw-prints.

They were between her and the hallway, her only means of escape, to which her eyes were inexorably drawn – to that total, impenetrable darkness cloaking the door, suddenly like the yawning mouth of a cave. With monsters inside. Before Cathy even had time to fully form that thought, she sensed movement. A shift of air, beyond her eyes to see. In the hall. Something grumbled, under its breath. Pinpricks of light, on eyes, shone... and something emerged, from the gloom of the hallway. A dog – a huge, black dog – covered in shaggy fur, almost _obscuring _its eyes. So big she could smell it from across the room.

Cathy opened her mouth, took a deep breath, and burst out laughing.

'Winston!' she gasped, as her dog cringed happily and winced forwards to be tickled.

'Oh, you scared the _heck _out of me, boy! Where were you when I needed you, huh?'

She lost her hand under one of his massive, hot, floppy ears, rubbing her other across his big, domed head – like teasing someone else in a headlock. After several happy minutes of baby-talk (after telling him off for getting muddy paw-prints everywhere, "Grams'll be so mad!"), with Wins panting contentedly into her face, Cathy went back to the kitchen counter. She had forgotten to feed him his late-night snack, so poured a gallon of dry dog-food into his shiny, metallic bowl and dumped it on the floor, giggling at the way he tried to stick his nose in before she'd even put it down.

Cathy watched him eat. There was something great about, just, seeing another creature enjoying itself, eating as much as it could – displayed a, kinda, zest for life. She didn't know the word "hedonism" but her feelings about Wins's enthusiasm for everything would've fallen somewhere in there. Maybe 'cause it reminded her of her brother – he'd loved Winston.

Cathy smiled sadly as Wins finished eating, took the bowl away and replaced it with another one full of water, so he could have a drink too. Strictly-speaking, she was supposed to lock Winston up in the dog-house, outside, at night, but that practice had long ago gone out the door – he just loved being inside, with people, too much. It was impossible trying to shift him out there when he didn't want to go - passive-aggressive behavior was no joke with a dog his size. Cathy guessed the big pussy was afraid of the dark, or something.

Still, they had standards. So when she tried to go upstairs, and Winston tried to follow, Cathy tutted at him.

'No, boy! You've got to stay down here. Sleep in the kitchen okay?'

Winston stayed where he was, front paws up on the third step of the stairs, behind her, panting expectantly.

'Seriously, Wins! Go back, Grams'll totally bitch at me!'

She tried to go upstairs again, and heard the tortuous groan of creaking wooden staircase behind her – reached the flat platform, halfway between floors, and turned to find Winston filling it, behind her. She sighed exasperatedly, tried to push his big head around, force him to go back down, but Winston merely nuzzled her, rumbling anxiously under his breath. He fixed her with big, sad brown eyes, almost as if trying to tell her something.

Cathy sighed again, throwing her hands up. 'Oh! My God! I so don't have time for this! I have _grass-stains.'_

Dogs are not known as respecters of fashion, though, so Cathy gave up and allowed him to follow her upstairs.

The two crept, guiltily, along the upstairs landing (a gravelly snort signaling that, in her room, Grams was snoring), past the bathroom (after a brief stop), and into Cathy's room. Which was one part frilly, two parts pink. The only concession to practicality, in here, was the fact that her bed was like a bunk-bed – raised up off the floor, with a little sofa-bed underneath, beside the ladder. Cathy got changed (inside her walk-in closet), came back out (to where Wins, spread out on the floor, twitched at her) and clambered up the ladder.

When she turned around, she jumped in surprise – Winston had moved, silently, from the floor, and was stretched on his back legs, his fore-paws hanging over the edge of the bunk, right in her face.

'Wins, you naughty boy!' she cried, worried that he was going to break it.

The big dog dropped his head to his huge, soup-plate paws, looking dolefully up at her. Cathy was, like, an ice-queen.

'Get _down_!' she faffed at him, flapping a hand. 'It's bad enough I have to sleep with you in here!'

Winston rumbled under his breath and dropped to the floor, climbing up onto the little sofa (which clanged in protest) and huffing (as if to say "huh... teenagers!") Cathy lay down in bed, feeling a little guilty about her treatment of the big lug. He was only being friendly.

Ignoring the creaking, groaning noises which the big, old house made around them, as they slept – because she was used to them – Cathy dropped her hand over the edge, and found herself rewarded with a coating of slobber from Wins's rough tongue. Cathy cringed, withdrew her hand, and rolled over.

It was some time later that night that she woke up, with unpleasant suddenness – too disorientated to figure out what had woken her.

Winston shifted, on the sofa-bed beneath her, and let out a growl so deep she felt it before hearing it.

Then it happened – the sound. _Knock, scrape, knock, s-craape. _Like someone (Cathy's horrible imagination told her) with a wooden leg, limping down the hall – right outside her door. It echoed round the house – in the dark and empty spaces downstairs. Up the staircase.

Cathy lay very still, under her covers, eyes wide open in the dark, trying to ignore it – it, and her hammering heart.

Nope. It was no good.

Steeling herself, Cathy threw the covers off, and dropped stealthily (she hoped) to the rug, crouching for a moment like one of Charlie's Angels. She moved off, across her floor – lit up in bars of moonlight which shafted through the big windows – to the door, and, with a heaved sigh, opened it.

Nothing. No one there. She was _almost _disappointed.

She had just turned her back, when: _Knock, scraaape. _The sound came again.

Cathy froze, breath streaming out in a cloud in front of her – she hadn't realised the house was _that_ cold.

_Knock, scraaape. _

Jerked out of her thoughts, Cathy shivered and spun confrontationally on the spot, _totally _ready to scream if anyone was behind her: but, again, no one. She sighed, stamping her foot in annoyance, and strode off decisively. She followed the sound, down the hall. _Knock, scraaape. _If some pirate _was_ walking around, up here, she was _so_ not in the mood to play hide & seek with him.

Cathy reached the bathroom door, which was made of old wood, painted white, and paused.

_Knock, scraaape. _

Bingo! It was inside, whatever "it" was.

Cathy took another deep breath, and slammed the door open! She gazed around the empty moonlit room, and reached out a shaking hand, groping blindly with the light-switch, her heart pounding. It flicked on to reveal: the bath, to her right, with the shower curtain drawn (Grams just loved curtains), toilet, bidet and sink to her left, and – right in front of her: the little window. Banging open in the wind and scraping the ledge as it moved.

Cathy laughed weakly, shaking her head at herself.

This one was _totally _going in the story she told her friends. She stepped forward to close it, fastening the old curly-metal latch securely, and moving to leave.

Something made her slow...

The shower curtain.

Had it been closed when she'd last been in here?

Stamping down thoughts of Psycho, Cathy extended a hand, grasped a handful of shower-curtain (which clinked loudly, at its ringed top, and crunched under her grip) and, in yet another decisive movement, threw it open.

Again, nothing.

'_Could've been worse_,' Cathy thought, a minute later, as she turned the light off and closed the door behind herself.

'_It could've been Grams in there...'_

Cracking up, and suppressing the urge to giggle wildly, she slouched sleepily back to her room, past the dark lump which was Winston's sleeping form, and pulled herself up the ladder, to bed – her little adventure had left her exhausted.

Cathy woke up, once more, that night – to hear the _Knock, scraaape_ echoing around the house again. This time, though, she sighed to herself, unimpressed, and ignored it. She did allow herself the little comfort of knowing that Winston was still with her though - because when she let her hand drop, sleepily, over the edge once more: he licked her fingers...

Several hours later, the little alarm-clock (which was on top of a tall bookcase, standing at the head of her bunk) went off with a trill, and Cathy smacked it into silence. She rolled out of bed, stretching and yawning expansively, and realised (from the lack of a dog trying to lick her face), that Winston had gone. Her bedroom door was still open, from when she had gone investigating, and Cathy padded through it, turned left, and went down the hall to the bathroom.

She stumbled inside, leaning heavily on the sink-edge, and reached for her toothbrush.

Which was when she looked up, in the mirror, and saw what was behind her.

Hanging in the bath, beside the open shower-curtain, a huge, bloodied corpse, a lump of an animal – its skin stripped right off, down to the slimey, purpled muscles. The rope, holding it, creaking under its massive weight, as its grotesque, swollen head squashed up against the bottom of the porcelain bath, tongue lolling, squelching and squeaking in a pool of its own blood.

It was Winston.

And, encrusted across the tiles behind him, in letters painted in his own blood, was the legend:

_PEOPLE CAN LICK TOO_

Cathy opened her mouth, and screamed, and screamed...

...The scream grew, and grew, and spread for miles, and became-

**'NGUH!?'**

Dean: awaking with a start.

He was sprawled, on his stomach, on a vocal motel mattress, hair stuck up on end, with red crease-marks pressed into his face, by the pillows engulfing his head.

Sammy, (when he twisted his head, to see), was sitting cross-legged, on the neatly-made bed next to him. There was a Styrofoam cup of coffee in his hand, gently steaming into his face, which was lit by the unholy glow of the laptop, glinting off the metal of his watch. As Dean awoke, Sam jumped guiltily, looking up at his big brother through his bangs, like a puppy caught next to a puddle.

'Sorry,' Sam apologized – for the moaning noise, from the laptop, which was the reason Dean seemed to have spontaneously caught Flailing Tourettes.

'I had a pop-up.'

'Dude!' Dean slurred, half-assed and half-asleep. 'Save it for the shower...!'

Sam felt amusement ghost around his mouth, and shook his head in disbelief. Unconscious, to sleazy Computer-Illiterate Sarcasm in under five seconds – that was Dean.

Never mind that the "moan" was a sound-effect from a paranormal website. He chose to take the high-road, and _not_ mention the fact that Dean had lunged, reflexively, under the pillows, reaching for his Bowie (the closest thing Dean Winchester had ever had to a teddy-bear). Or the fact that his brother was now wearing a set of go-faster-stripes down his face. Useful camouflage, he guessed, for the next time they found themselves hidden in a stubbled, freckley, red-and-white striped forest.

Dean half pushed himself up, big shoulders twisting under his wrinkling t-shirt, and blinked in the suddenly-too-bright light of the laptop, as he looked at Sam. The mattress twanged and _goinged _underneath him.

'What time is it?' he asked, thickly.

'Time you got off your ass.'

'Oh, so – dark-thirty?' Dean replied, twirling a finger.

Sam replied with a sanctimonious, "well it's your own fault for being a couch-potato" twitch of the eyebrows, and Dean, yawning extravagantly, pushed the covers off've himself, swung his feet to the floor and sat up on the edge of his bed. The ridged edge of the mattress bit uncomfortably into the flesh of his legs, so he shifted to get comfortable. They were kind of on the brink of a prank-war, right now, so he didn't buy Sam's "sorry" for a second – and he noticed a smile flickering round the edge of Sam's mouth.

'What are you smilin' at? You... freakishly early-rising... freak?' he muttered, lamely.

'Nothing.' Sam answered, absolutely _not _looking at the face art.

He deflected the thrown pillow without looking up, and Dean caught it on the rebound and the stomach, holding it there, lazily.

'Get any coffee for _me_?' he asked, scratching the underside of his leg, which was bare below his boxers.

'Yeah, it's on the table,' Sam answered. On second-thoughts, maybe he _couldn't _resist: 'Go get it, Tiger.'

Dean frowned, the joke sailing straight over his head, and went to get his fix.

Five seconds later, back on the bed, he broke off the lid and took his first sip. The heat pressed into his eyelids as he closed them, swallowing slowly and feeling it trickle right down the column of his throat, spreading warmth and some life through him. He sighed. All the small things, making all the crap worthwhile. _Bliss._

Dean cracked open a bleary eye and stared through his eyelashes at the familiar profile of Sam, in front of him – wearing a college-boy sweater. Flicky hair, curling around his ears, outlined by the dull light filtering through the old drapes, on the window behind. A look of child-like absorption on his face as he scrolled through however-many pages. Sam had no idea about coffee. _Latte_, what the hell was that? Milk in coffee, it was sick. You weren't supposed to let it go cold like that, either, hovering in front of your pie-hole while your other hand was suspended over the keyboard.

Dean rolled his eyes.

'So,' he started, conversationally. 'What kinda porn you looking at?'

Sam flicked his eyes, darkly, at his brother. 'None. I'm not looking at-'

'_Nun_-porn?' Dean interrupted with glee. 'Dude! That's pretty hardcore, even for you...'

Sam sighed, gave him an unimpressed look, and Dean smothered his grin, not-very-well, behind his coffee. Sensing his little brother's lack of a sense of humor about, y'know, _everything_, he forced the crowing smugness off his face.

'Alright. Seriously, dude, watcha looking at?'

Sam heaved a sigh again, this time in a way that suggested he wished he could just dump all in the info in Dean's head without having to explain it.

'Couple of possible cases,' he said, voice breezier and business-like as he returned his attention to the screen.

'Such as?'

'Well, I think there might be our kinda weird going on in Massachusetts...'

'Huh, must be Thursday,' Dean muttered. 'Go on.'

'Um... mystery illness! I-n Worcester County.' He scrolled to it, twisting his shoulders as he finished speaking. 'Fifteen cases so far, four of 'em fatal. Some of the victims who're still-alive have said they think it's animal-related.'

'How?'

'Well, all of them claim to've noticed strange behavior in the local wildlife – wild animals, pets...'

'Strange how?' Dean asked, feeling like a stuck record.

Sam moved from the laptop to a couple of print-outs he had, splaying them out in his big hands.

'Increased aggression mostly. Uh... random attacks on people. One woman-' he flicked the page to the top '-was sent to hospital with severe injuries after her _aviary _went nuts.'

'Her _aviary_?'

'Yeah, her aviary. You know, you keep pet birds in it?'

'...She has an _aviary_?'

'Keep sayin' it, Dean – that'll make it less weird.'

Dean had no come-back for that.

'Alright, so – tell me more, Mr Wizard.'

'Well, it sounds kinda like _The Birds_,' Sam continued, with a grimace. 'This woman went inside the "aviary", one morning, to feed them? And, apparently, they just – turned on her. Pecked pieces out of her.'

'Yikes...'

'Mmm,' Sam muttered, mouth twisting queasily. 'And the next day she was in the ER, recovering, doing just fine, and she suddenly collapsed. Under this mystery illness.'

Dean drew the corners of his mouth down, considering. Whether or not there was a link here depended on whether or not this illness was a full on, head-spinning, projectile-vomiting funfair, or just a freak medical thing. He wished.

'What're the symptoms?' he asked.

'Rashes, fever, vomiting,' Sam listed. 'The three Cs,' -Dean opened his mouth- 'cough, coryza (a runny nose) and conjunctivitis (bloodshot eyes). Also, the victims're prostrate-'

'Wow! Wow!' Dean made sure not to spill his coffee. 'You mean they have... downstairs problems?'

'That's _prostate_, Dean. Prostrate means they go limp.'

Dean's face screwed up, appalled. 'Dude!'

'No, man!' Sam covered his face with his hands. 'I mean they go all weak. All over? Bedridden?'

'Oh...' Dean calmed down. 'Thank God...'

Sam rolled his eyes.

While he was looking at the laptop again, Dean gave his brother another considering, sidelong glance, frowning through his eyelashes. Putting that kind of pattern together, this much research – narrowing it down from all the bullcrap (medical journals, local newspaper articles, obits, commonalities between victims) – in the space of only a coupla hours? That was impressive. That was John-good. For a moment, as he squinted, with the light on Sam's dimples and his curly, dark hair, he could almost imagine dad was sitting in front of him. And it hurt.

'Hey,' Sam said, adam's apple bobbing – unaware of his audience. 'You wanna hear something else weird?'

Dean swallowed, dropped his eyes to his coffee. 'Hit me.'

'The illness doesn't seem to be contagious. At least, not in any normal sense. There's no discernible pattern. The doctors can't figure out how it's spreading!'

Dean had a bad feeling about this.

'That's odd. So, what else've the furry brigade been doing?'

'Uh... couple dogs turned on their owners. Pet hamster, bit its way out of a cage. Oh! A-nd, twenty-three rabbits somehow managed to escape from a local animal-testing laboratory.'

'Nice. Go Bugsy.'

Sam scrolled to an online-page of the Telegram & Gazette. 'The local press thinks the _human_-disease is some weird strain of measles.'

'A-nd you think it's something else?'

Sammy inclined his head, rationally, his empathy for the victims already etched into his face.

'I've said it before – animals can have a strong sense of the paranormal... maybe they felt something...'

Sam moved his attention from the laptop, to his brother's face – looking at him warily, offering reassurance.

Dean didn't know it, but he was thinking about the last time they'd faced a mystery illness, back in Fitchburg, Wisconsin. If he was honest with himself, Sam had felt a secret, minuscule joy at learning things about Dean he'd never known before – being brought in on the secret for once. Joy and guilt: for not being able to remember any of it, so he could understand, or help. Guilt that those memories had somehow revolved around him, and that he'd been totally unaware of it. As if it was his fault Dean had had a painful memory. He'd wanted so badly to help his brother – then and now – but all he'd ever done was fail at it. So Sammy wasn't used to failure, and he hoped (if this thing turned out to be another Shtriga) that Dean would be okay with it, and that he wouldn't go over the edge. Like Montana.

Mostly, he didn't want to see hear that sad, hollow voice again – sitting on the hood of the impala near Greenville, or giving up on life in Oregon...

...but Dean just thought he was waiting for a reaction. So:

'Well,' he chimed in dutifully. 'Definitely sounds like our kinda gig there, Sammy.'

Sammy blinked, seemed mollified. 'Yeah,' he said, huskily. 'Right.'

Dean, busy tucking his pillow back into place, looked up in surprise as Sam shuffled off the bed, got to his feet and snapped the laptop shut.

'Woah, woah – where you going?'

'We should go.'

'What, now?! I haven't showered yet-'

'Well do it now,' Sam replied. 'I'm gonna go check us out.'

'Dude,' Dean almost laughed. 'What's the rush?'

Sam paused on the way to the door, room-key in hand and laptop under his arm, wide-eyed, unassuming.

'No reason,' he said, innocently.

'No reason?'

'Alright,' seeing Dean unconvinced, Sam began, in his reasonable-explanation voice. 'So – there was this one old lady who was submitted to the hospital, with the same symptoms as everyone else? But she survived, went back home.'

'So?'

'_So_, I think we should find her. Question her. Before-'

'Before she takes a dirt-nap?'

Sam paused. 'That's not what I was about to say, Dean-'

'Oh. Yeah. Sure.' Dean interrupted, infuriatingly insincere as she shuffled to the end of his bed.

Sam was about to snark back, when Dean had the thought:

_'You just can't wait to get out there and "save" people._'

And both of them saw it written on his face. However...

'Okay,' he said out loud. 'Who's the old broad?'

Sam sighed, again, and slid one of his printouts from under his arm. It was a screen-capture from the site of a local hysterical animal-rights organization, the ALF, which was keeping tabs on the situation, arguing against blaming the animals, and trying to act as a hub for all the info on cases. He was aware that Dean was trying to stall him, in a stubborn refusal to actually get up and do something, this early in the morning, and to... what? Hold him back from the hunt, maybe? He ignored it.

When he found her name, Sam read it off in a sing-song voice. 'A woman named – Rowan Hemmingway.'

'She hot?'

'What?'

'I'll meet you outside in the car in twenty minutes.'

'...She's not a nun, is she?'

'_Twenty minutes, Dean!_'

He raised his voice, as Sammy stormed away:

'Cause I always wondered – Sammy? _That thing about the soap?!'_

**BANG! **The door slammed shut.

'Fine,' Dean muttered to the empty room, bubbling into his coffee. 'Bet you _he _wondered.'


	3. Chapter 2: Dangerous Intellectuals

**Chapter 2: Dangerous Intellectuals**

_One week later..._

It was a dark and stormy night...

Alright, so it wasn't stormy, as such, but it was definitely windy – and dark... Well... pretty damn gloomy, anyway.

Near the woods, on a small hill at the edge of the town, stood a house: an old creaky place, with manicured lawns and a white picket fence; looking out over the surrounding suburbs. As a chill wind blew leaves, from a tree at the foot of its garden, spiralling up, a man stepped out from the shadows there, and stood, staring up the slope at the house. The stars shone silver and cold on his shoulders, making hollows of his eyes and carving out his cheeks in darkness, providing just enough light to show up the red tint in his hair.

He padded across the lawn, his progress marked by not a single footfall, as the clouds shifted. A gibbous moon looked accusingly down, and – as he disappeared into the shadows of the porch – a passing observer might have noted that his eyes glimmered, strangely...

Inside the house, in a bedroom on the second floor, a young women lay sound asleep, her fair hair fanning out across the pillows. She shifted in her sleep, and the moonlight which lanced through her balcony window gleamed on the bare skin of her arms, exposed to the gentle breeze which billowed in the curtains, as she slept.

There was a tiny scratching sound, almost imperceptible over the groan of the wind outside... and, suddenly... a shadow began to grow, creeping across the patch of floorboards which the moon had painted white. It slithered up the foot of the girl's bed, winding itself over the curve of the bedpost, and hovered there. Over her. Another noise, now. A footstep. And there was a silhouette, standing in the curtains, haloed in white from the moon it now obscured – contemplating her.

The silhouette shifted and became a man. A man who was moving across her bedroom floor. Each step, now, coming closer. Closer. He reached the young woman's bed, and stopped, watching her sleep, listening to her breathing deep. An uneasy frown creased her forehead, at the chill from the open window, and what little light there was glowed off serrated teeth, as the man smiled down on her. Cruelty and malice were etched into the lines of his half-hidden face.

Her eyes fluttered open and he grinned ever-wider at the look of shock sweeping across her face. The girl reared back against the pillows, hair flying, and opened her mouth to scream.

'Too late,' said the Vampire. 'You're already dead.'

'Funny,' said a voice, and the Vampire whirled around. 'I was just about to tell _you_ that..'

Too late indeed. Blood exploded from the back of the vampire's head as the bullet hit, scything into his flesh with a muted blip. The silencer, still smoking from the bullet, and the .45 which fired it, appeared, seeming to hover in the darkened room until a slim, muscled arm emerged after them, followed by the body of another young woman – older, mid twenties.

Morgan gazed with mild curiosity at the enraged bafflement of the creature standing before her. Despite the bullet in his head, he saw her clearly – a black-haired woman, in jeans, a dark sleeveless t-shirt and combat boots. Stunning, despite the fact that she was staring at him with wide-set eyes, completely devoid of mercy – and the fact that that gun-hand was not moving an inch.

'_Stupid_ girl!' the vampire hissed. 'Guns don't work on our kind!'

'Pity,' she replied, lowering her gun a little. 'What about hollow-tipped bullets filled with dead man's blood. Do they?'

Even as he sprang at her, the vampire's strength failed, and he collapsed, sluggishly, to the floor, cursing her weakly under his breath. Morgan walked over, gun still clasped securely in both hands, and flipped his prone body onto its back, with one booted foot. She peered appraisingly at the vampire for a second, and then, having decided to be on the safe side, emptied a couple more bullets into his chest.

It was only then that she looked up, double-taked, and spotted the girl. Still in bed, she was sitting up rigidly against the headboard as if trying to press herself through the wall. Her blonde hair seemed to have developed static, and had plastered itself to her face and the wall around, a pair of white-knuckled hands were gripping her covers, right up to her chin, and she was staring, slack-jawed – motionless, and unblinking. Except for the twitch under her left eye. Under normal circumstances, Morgan would've burst out laughing – at the human dandelion effect – but not now. Now, Morgan swore.

She moved towards the bed, tucking her .45 into the holster on her belt, and doubled over, moving the girl's face aside, by the chin, with surprising gentleness. She wiped her hair away, and patted her cheek until she blinked.

'Erm, look – I'm sorry you had to see that,' Morgan said stiffly. 'Are you okay?'

A look of recognition, at least, came into the girl's eyes, and Morgan dropped her hands to her knees.

'You...' the girl murmured. 'You, you...!?'

'I...?'

'Who _are _you?'

'I'm–' Morgan floundered. 'I suppose you could say I'm – urgh, God – like Buffy? Only less gay...'

'But you're..._British_?'

Morgan spread her hands. 'Sorry to disappoint.'

'So that guy – he's, like, a vampire?'

'_Very _like a vampire.'

'And you _shot _him!?'

Morgan raised her eyebrows defensively, following the girl's gaze to look at the body which was slumped shamelessly on the floor, some feet away.

'Well, he _was _about to eat you... which is, I'm guessing, a whole new experience for you...'

'But... but he was still walking around!?'

Morgan shrugged. 'That's vampires for you.'

'But I... I don't- I mean, I thought, if it was a vampire, you had to stake-'

'Look-' Morgan lost her temper, 'Little Girl – when you wake up tomorrow? This whole thing will have been a – just a weird nightmare, okay?'

Her reply was a look of blissful relief as the girl beamed at her.

'Oh! Oh, okay! I get it! This is a dream? So, I just got to wake up?'

'Got it in one, Barbie.'

'Cool!?'

She whipped around abruptly, hair flying, and snuggled back down into her pillows with a happy smile.

Morgan, still doubled over – except now with hair whip-lash across her face – blinked.

A-nyway.

Morgan wiped down the blood splatter on the windows with a rag. She bundled the vampire up, into the extra-large duffel-bag she had brought along for that very purpose, and stood, bracing herself for a second, before hefting him onto her shoulders with a strangled grunt. Fireman's lift ready, she was just pushing her way through the balcony-door windows, when the girl's querulous voice called out after her.

'Wait!'

In the doorway, Morgan turned with a look of exhausted dread, and sighed. 'What?'

'If – if this is a dream, what does it mean?'

The girl watched the strange woman stare at her slowly, for a moment, and then glance around.

'It means you should quit the cheer-leading squad... and dye your hair black...' She turned to go. 'Oh! And... burn everything you own that's pink, girl, 'cause-' she nodded at the entire room '-damn...!'

With that, she barged through the French doors, and hefted the duffel-bag over the edge of the balcony.

Which was satisfying.

Time was of the essence, and she didn't fancie trying to make her way through an old house, so Morgan vaulted the railings herself, maneuvered to a point where she was hanging from the very bottom of it, dropped one floor, and rolled. Upon landing, she spotted a garden-trolley propped up against the fence – basically an l-shaped frame on two wheels – and pulled the vampire onto it. Much easier.

In the front of the house, the white picket-fence banged open as Morgan moved through it, scowling at the dead-weight of the vampire, which was making the little un-oiled wheels squeak. She made her way down the dark, deserted street to an '85 Bronco, which was parked on the side of the road. She dropped her bundle with disdain (and a disgruntled groan of protest) onto the pavement and unlocked the SUV, before shunting her catch into the cavernous boot. She put the trolley back, and shut the gate behind herself.

Glancing up from her car-keys, habitually checking the coast was clear, Morgan walked out onto the road and clambered into the driver's seat. Once inside, she paused, staring worriedly at her fingers (drumming on the steering wheel), and chewed her lip. She glanced up at the moon. Damn thing. She hated it when it was gibbous, it seemed to be threatening to go full the second she turned her back. Coming to a decision, she rummaged in a pocket, and drew out a mobile phone, pressing her speed-dial and holding it up to her ear.

Still looking out across the street for onlookers. The other end clicked on.

'Luke? I've only got one, I don't know where the- what?'

'_I said: can I put you on hold?_' A voice shouted in her ear. '_I'm a bit busy!_'

'What – how busy? How many?'

_'Too many!'_

'Luke, what's that noise, where are you?'

'Fuck knows, but I'm on a motorcycle.'

'What? Why?'

'_Because it's twice as much as fun as a unicycle?! Whoops, got to go!_'

'No, Luke, don't put me on- Luke? _Luke_? Oh, you-'

The dulcet tones of Led Zeppelin's _Communication Breakdown _jarred in her ear ("_havin' a nervous breakdown, drive me insaaaaane!!") _Morgan slammed her phone shut in annoyance and turned the keys in the ignition.

The SUV moved off with a squeal of breaks...

Morgan didn't see it, but, on the empty road, in the shadows left behind by her disappearing tail-lights, something shifted. A flurry of leaves, perhaps having taken all this time to reach their destination, danced across the road – and suddenly there was a men standing there, almost invisible in the pitch black, but for his silhouette.

The Silent Man watched her leave.

And, on a dirt track, behind a house, beside a wood, something threw back its head, and howled...

'_There he is!_'

Luke swore loudly, shoved his phone away, and kicked at the throttle, revving the bike up and hurling it through the nearest space – which happened to be the pitch-_black _space between two trees.

Stinging blood was soaking into his socks and squelching in his trainers – he'd already skinned his ankle twice, missing the pedal in the dark. And now he bellowed at the jolting in his kidneys, as the bike hurtled over rough ground, seat slamming sporadically into his arse. His voice was lost over the roar of the engine, but he kept going fast – faster and faster – weaving drunkenly through the trees, at high speed, and having a bloody good time in the process. After a frantic few minutes, the sounds of his pursuit – the yells and that annoying screech-thing they did when angry – faded into the distance.

Luke slowed to a putt-putting halt, standing up in the saddle and gently heaving in breaths which misted in front of his face.

He stood stock still, ears straining, trying to catch a hint of danger in the silence.

Nothing.

Luke breathed a sigh of relief, and-**_BANG! _**

Something jolted the entire bike, hot liquid burst down his leg and angry shouts exploded out of the forest around him.

Wondering if the wetness was his own blood, Luke belted the pedal with his foot and shot off again, needing to weave less as the trees thinned. Shafts of light were lancing through the trees, their hillbilly lamps searching for him – although they could already see better than him, in the dark. Yells sounded again, either side of him, as well as behind. They were gaining on him. They knew the area better, could track him by his scent. He was screwed.

Wait... No! Hang on - an opening!

Luke let out a strangled moan of relief and steered his bike through the new space between two trees, onto the stretch of bare tarmac which his roving eyes had spotted. It was bathed in grey, dimly illuminated by the stars which served as the only light, now the clouds had blanketed the moon. Grinning, Luke urged his bike up onto the flat surface. Now, if he could just follow this road back to-

The engine was spluttering.

'Noo!' Luke groaned, kicking it. 'Don't you dare die on me, you piece of-'

It died.

Luke slapped the handlebars in fury, walking the bike to a halt and twisting around to see what the problem was. There. The moon came out from behind the clouds, and suddenly he had enough light to see: just behind his leg – a jagged hole in the fuel-tank. That's what the wetness was, not blood. A steady flow, slowly killing his engine, and stinking, too – leaving a scent trail right behind him, wherever he went.

'_Bastard!_' Luke muttered, with feeling.

And then he realised something.

He realised that the moon wasn't out...

And he didn't need it to see by...

Because there was a large group of vampires, a hundred yards away, shining their torches on him.

Handy, that.

Morgan ignored the feeling of gravity, pressing her back into her seat as she accelerated, and looked down from the road to see if the hold music was off yet. She spared the zonked-out vampire a glance in the rear-view mirror, that was all, before returning to stare, worriedly into space. He was taking too long to answer. She was about to hang up when there was a click at the other end and the hold-music cut out.

'_Luke_?'

There was a tiny hum, echoing along the road.

What a bloody time to call!

Luke propped his useless bike up by its stand, swinging his leg over to stand in the road, (and wincing wryly as he did so). Holding up a hand for silence from the vampires (phone still humming), he reached casually into his pocket, and drew it out, answering it with a head-clearing sniff. No prizes for guessing who was on the other end.

_'Luke?'_

'That's me.'

_'Oh, thank God – are you alright?'_

'Erm... Ask me again in five minutes.'

_'What? Why?'_

Luke licked his lips. 'You know those other vampires?'

_'Mm-hmm.'_

'I kind of found 'em...'

_'How many?'_

'Six in the jeep, and – one, two, three... Oh, I think about _eight _on bikes.'

_'Yeah right.'_

'I kid you not.'

_'Fourteen? Luke, that's ridiculous, vampires never nest in groups that big.'_

'Oh, well, I'm sorry Professor – I'll just go and tell them that, shall I?'

_'...Luke, where are they?'_

'Well, they're staring at me right now, and they look pretty solid.'

Luke felt a pang of guilt at that – he supposed he should've broken it a bit more gently. There was a silence on the other end, and he realised Morgan was gathering her self-control.

_'...what are you going to do?'_

'Oh, I dunno. I'll think of something.'

_'Maybe I can get to you in time-'_

'Nope, no chance, and I'm not asking you to.'

_'Luke...'_ There it was, the tell-tale wobble in the voice. _'Just – tell me you have a plan.'_

Luke was surprised to feel coldness in his own eyes, at that, and sniffed again, blaming it on the night air.

'Oh, you know me, sis!' He said. 'I never rush in to anything!'

Morgan laughed weakly.

'Now, if you'll excuse me,' Luke finished, looking down the road at the vampires.

'I've got to kick some bat.'

He snapped the phone shut, returning it to his pocket – and at the same moment, one of the vampires inside the jeep turned the large lamp, mounted on top of the windshield, onto their quarry: finally able to see who it was they were hunting. The artificial light glared down the road, lighting up a slim, athletically-built young man – in jeans, vest, open check-shirt and a beanie – who looked to be in his early twenties. It shone on his wolfish green eyes and empty holster-belt, on the mane of wavy golden hair, peeping out from his hat, and framing a long, remarkably pretty face – beautiful enough to be good looking on a woman's body. As had been repeatedly pointed out to him, by Morgan.

Luke saluted and bowed at the smothered exclamations of surprise – he could hear himself going from "kill the bastard!" to "...maybe we could keep him?"

No time for philosophy now: the vampires were revving their motorbikes, putting boot to pedal.

Morgan was gripping the steering-wheel so hard her fingers were clicking, and she barely noticed as the vampire pulled himself up in the back, grinning at her in the rear-view mirror. She did spot it eventually though, and rolled her eyes in response.

The thing pressed its bloody forehead to the glass, a crimson flower of gore spreading out across the flat surface, and grinned wider as lines of blood threaded down between its eyes, soaking its eyelashes.

'I can smell - your – _fear_,' it crooned. 'For him. Luke. Is he your lover?'

'Oh dear,' Morgan sighed. 'Is this where you offer to turn us, so we can "be together" for eternity?'

'Oh no,' the thing hissed. 'I wouldn't turn you... Things like me aren't interested in things like you.'

'And yet, you insist on talking to me.' Morgan noted.

'Does he know what you really are?' the Vampire asked. 'This "Luke" person?'

Morgan opened her mouth to bark a reply, but something inside made her stop.

'_What I really am...?_' she thought. '_Not entirely..._'

'We should be united,' it was saying. 'We're on the same side! Both outcast, both – with one foot in darkness-'

'You know, for a dead man walking, you are really chatty.'

The vampire continued as if she hadn't spoken.

'I suppose the real tragedy is that "Luke" will never know the real you, now...'

Morgan glared. 'What's that supposed to mean?'

'He mentioned fourteen of us...'

'So?' She didn't like that "us".

'So... I happen to know there are _more _than fourteen of us.'

The vampire started to laugh. 'Even if he escapes, there are more out there, waiting for him!'

The blood was pooling in its mouth, gurgling as it laughed, popping in bubbles, like snot, out of its nose. Morgan's mouth twisted in revulsion as she stared at it.

'They'll tear him to pieces!'

Anger flashed into her and Morgan pulled the SUV over roughly, driving as deep as she could into the neighbouring woods. She got out, drawing with her a machete off the passenger seat, and slammed the door furiously. She strode to the back, jerked the boot open and half-jumped into it, perching one leg on the bed and jabbing a hand viciously into the shadows. She grabbed a handful of the vampire's clothes and yanked him out into the air, where he slithered limply to the floor. Cold rage still coursing through her, she pulled him to his feet and propped him up against a tree, standing back to hold the machete at arm's distance, against his neck.

'So here's the deal.' Morgan said, breathing heavily, nostrils flaring. 'I'm going to kill you. We both know that. It's non-negotiable.'

The vampire stared groggily at her through blood-soaked eyelashes.

'So all you have left to do, is choose whether to tell me what you know, or not.'

The vampire swallowed. 'Then I choose not.'

Morgan leaned closer, whispering– 'I was hopin' you'd say that' – and swung...

Luke pelted down the road, bloody feet slipping in his trainers on the pedals. Thank God he had a hat, that's all – it was plugging the ragged hole in the petrol- sorry, "gas" tank. Not that it was doing him any good. He'd been gunning it for hundreds of yards and it had made no difference at all. Any second now, they'd be on him. Or maybe...

Luke's eyes strained furiously down the road, looking for something ahead – and suddenly he was skidding, leaning sideways, scraping along the road in a blazing trail of sparks. No! Back up! Gunning again. The vampires were whooping, jeering, his engine was stuttering, hat torn loose, on the floor.

One vampire, hair whipping in the cold wind, turned her head as she leant over her bike, and something ahead on the road caught her eye. Too late, she saw what it was...

There was a sickening _shlick _sound, horrified screams, a screech of metal as motorbikes jerked up under their riders and skittered away along the road, trailing more sparks. Luke, thrown off his bike, onto his front, with arms covering his head, looked up just in time to leap to his feet and dance out of the way of the crashing jeep, searing past (its lamp now lying, severed, some feet away). There were decapitated heads, flying through the air, trailing gushing droplets of blood like kite-tails, and he danced these too, dodging each as it soared past, hit the tarmac with a sickeningly wet thud, and (in some cases) bounced.

It was all over in a couple of seconds...

Luke staggered to his feet, properly, and looked around at the scene of carnage. Eight mangled motorcycles, some thrown together and blown apart, belching smoke into the night; the jeep, wrapped around a tree, with half of its top missing; occupants lying limply inside like ragdolls; a tacky layer of blood over everything; and, interspersed among the debris... fourteen severed heads.

And finally, just above it all, glinting innocently (if wetly) in the moonlight:

_The string of metal wire he'd strung across the road, earlier on..._

The vampire winced and shut his eyes, waiting for the end... but it didn't come. He opened them fearfully – only to see Morgan strapping the machete to her leg, ignoring him.

'You're – you're not going to kill me?' he whispered.

'Not now,' Morgan answered. She started to walk away, but called over her shoulder.

'Don't flatter yourself that you somehow talked your way out of this, honey, 'cause you didn't – I'm just making a point.'

'A point?' The vampire gulped, pushing himself upright. 'What point?'

Morgan turned to face him, standing with thumbs looped into her holster-belt, hanging on her slim hips.

'That I'm not like _you._ There's more separating us than just _your _ability to get a suntan in winter. One thing especially.'

'What's that?'

She looked at the vampire. 'Control. I don't hunt things like you because I have some score to settle, or, because I get a kick out of killing. I do it because it's my job, and I'm good at it. So, if you were thinking you could tug at my heartstrings – make me angry enough to kill you in a rage? Maybe feel guilty about it later? By threatening my little brother? Think again.'

The vampire contemplated her in silence as she turned her back, walking away, and then called out: 'My kills are necessary. I only kill to feed, I am a hunter-'

'No!' Morgan snapped, whirling around. 'You picked out a _highschool _kid! A _child_! And you stalked her house. _That's _not necessary, _that'_s _murder_.'

'I need blood to survive.'

'Not human blood!' Morgan snapped. 'Just blood. You choose humans? You choose to make an enemy of me.'

'So he's your brother, then? Luke?'

Morgan blinked at the subject-change. 'What if he is?'

'If he is, it explains why my mentioning him moved you to an act of compassion...'

Morgan laughed hollowly, and turned away again.

'Oh, don't worry, sweetheart. This i'n't compassion. You're still due a kickin.'

'But, you see, I'm gathering my strength,' the vampire said, stepping closer. 'And you still haven't killed me, so how, exactly, do you propose to hurt me?'

'Well,' Morgan shrugged, she spoke in a succint monotone. 'My brother and I, we tend to do things a little like the Russian Mafia. You know: kill everything you hold dear, everyone you love. Things like you may pretend to crave blood, but what you really crave is Control: over other people. That's why you're the head honcho, not out of loyalty, or natural instinct, but because you love having control of those other parasites. What's left of them, anyway. Thanks to "things like me" there isn't much of a nest left for you to go back to...'

The vampire was standing much closer now, peering down at her through curtains of red hair, as if seeing her for the first time.

'_Oh God_', Morgan thought. '_What the hell is it about me that these freaks find so alluring?_'

'For someone who claims to dislike conversation, you are remarkably eloquent,' he murmured, trying to go old-school, Nosferatu on her she reckoned. 'I'm Rufus. Who are you?'

'That's none of your-'

'_Who are you?_'

Morgan smirked crookedly. The second time someone had asked her that question in as many hours.

'You've heard what they say about the Russian Mafia, right?' she said, leaning closer. 'Well, I'm the dangerous intellectual. And... one thing you should know-' she leant closer again '-about us dangerous intellectuals? Is that, sometimes...' she whispered.

'We lie.'

And swung...

Luke looked around, at the lancing flames – smoke, wreckage, headless bodies – and whistled.

'Dude!' He whispered. 'I am Van _Helsing_!'

His moment of shocked awe was short-lived, however, as his phone suddenly vibrated. Luke took it out and answered.

'Call off the search, tell the Queen to stop blubbing – Luke Enfield lives...'

'_More's the pity. So the plan worked?_'

'Yup! _Damn _I'm good.'

'_And so modest, with it. What did you do, in the end?_'

'Oh, you know, the old piano-oblongata. Fourteen of 'em, one foot shorter – piece of piss!'

Morgan sighed. '_This one here said there were more than fourteen._'

Luke looked around at the scene of carnage.

'Oh, no,' he said airily. 'I definitely got all the ones _we _found. But what about that one with you, the head guy? Is he still breathing?'

'_What do you think?_'

Luke grinned. 'Hehe. That's my girl... God, Morgy, the state of things here – I'll be crowing for months!'

'_That messy, eh?_'

'H-oh yes.'

'_If it's that bad, what're we going to do about it?_'

A grin slowly spread further over Luke's face.

'I think it's time we called the Doc.'

'_Good God, boy, how bad can it be?_'

He scoffed. 'You remember Zaire?'

'_The Republic of Congo, you mean, and – yes, I do... Well, if it's that bad I'd better come and get you, get you out of the way before the cops show up._'

'...I bet Van Helsing never had to put up with this shit.'

'_What?_'

'Uh, never mind. Anyway – stop talking and come and pick me up, woman. I'm not in the mood for coppers.'

'_Where are you?_'

Luke glanced around, in the dim light – and saw, some distance away, in the trees, a road-sign.

'I'm on, uhhhh... Collingwood Road! Just follow the smoke.'

'_Alright. You need to get rid of any evidence that you were there..._' (Luke rolled his eyes at the trail of petrol and abandoned motorbike) '_...We can't afford to get on America's Most Wanted._'

'Yeah, alright, alright. See you in a bit...'

Luke hung up.


	4. Chapter 3: Bored In A Barn

**Chapter 3: Bored In A Barn**

'I'm telling you, Dean, this is the place!'  
'Yeah, well, wherever they are now, it ain't here.'

A couple of miles away, two other siblings were sitting, bickering, in an abandoned, and very-recently vacated cattle barn.

'I don't get it,' Sam said, frowning thoughtfully. 'How could a nest this size go unnoticed for so long? I mean, Joshua said it was more than one nest grouped together, right? And this place is huge! So... why isn't it full? Even for the number of vampires I saw, Dean, this place is big. Where the hell are they?'  
'I dunno, Sam! Maybe they've got better things to do than hang around here all day?'

Dean was annoyed. On the way to one case, only to get pulled off – sidelined – onto another, by a random call. A call which turned out to be a bust – which was worrying, 'cause Joshua was generally good about stuff like this. Mystery illness, random aggressive animals, and vampires, oh my! What the _hell?!_

Dean sighed, got up from his seat (the bottom rung of a ladder which lead up to a loft), with a squeak of leather, and walked around, swinging his machete in boredom.

'Aww man, it's getting light already!'

Sam followed his gaze, to look through the open door – which dawn was, indeed, lightening.  
'They should be back by now,' he murmured.  
'Yeah.' Dean said simply, sarcastic. 'They should. So. What do _you _think happened, there, Haley-Joel?'

Sam rolled his eyes.  
'I don't know. Maybe they heard we were coming...?'  
'So? Vampires aren't exactly scared of a fight, Sam. Didn't you see Buffy?'  
'No, I didn't. Why? Did you?'

Dean paused in his pacing to half-turn, looking over his shoulder, freeing one hand, from running its thumb along the blade of his machete, to gesture with it.

'Not really.' He shrugged. 'I just figured that kinda angry-chick stuff is your thing.'

Sam stared, jaw open. '_How is "angry-chick stuff" my thing?_'  
'Well, you _act _like an angry chick.'  
'_I do not_!' Sam hastily lowered his voice. 'I do not!'

Dean was already cackling. He grinned at the disgruntled look on his brother's face and turned back away from him, squinting, with mild curiosity, up at the roof as he spoke. Half hoping that something interesting would drop through it.

'Come on, Sam! Admit it, this job's a bust! Whatever your spidey-sense's telling you to stick around for, it ain't here. I vote we go back to the motel room – get us some breakfast, and hit the sack. Waddya say?'

Sam heaved a sigh, flapped his arms in defeat, and nodded. 'Yeah. Yeah, alright.'

Dean was just moving to the door when a cough from behind him drew his attention, and he turned back to see Sam, standing with one hand resting on the ladder, looking embarrassed.

'Um...'  
'What?'  
'There was _one_ thing...'

The two were walking down a track, back to where they had the impala parked – just on the outskirts of a forest.  
'So this guy you saw,' Dean was saying, painstakingly. 'while I was inside. He just _flew _past? On a busted up...?'  
'Yamaha.'  
'...Yamaha – screaming for all the vampires to follow him?'

Sammy, trudging at his side, with hands buried in his pockets, nodded. 'Uh-huh.'  
Dean nodded. 'Okay, so let me ask you somethin' – this guy? He wasn't... trailing a cloud of magic _pixie-_dust, was he?'  
Sam stiffened indignantly. 'I'm telling you the truth, Dean!'  
'So you're tellin' me some _random _guy, comes outta nowhere, and leads the vampires off?  
'Yeah.'  
Dean quirked an eyebrow. 'What, _all _of 'em?'  
'Yeah!'  
'_One _guy?'  
'Dean-!'  
'Alright, alright! Whatever you say, Sammy.'  
'And there were more _of _them, Dean. More than we've ever seen in one place before.'  
'Well how many?'  
'I counted twelve. At least.'  
Dean tacked on a nervous smile. 'Come on, dude – you'd have have a total screw loose.'  
'Yeah, or a _death_-wish,' Sam scoffed half-pessimistically.  
'So he's probably dead already?'  
'Maybe...' Sam muttered, and then took a breath: 'There were a few in this, uh, open-top jeep. I thought maybe we could check out the plates, find the owner, but...'

Dean was wincing, shaking his head. 'It's probably stolen.'  
'Right,' Sammy nodded. 'Which means, unless the guy who owned it was still-around long enough to report it-'  
'Not likely.'  
'-then we have precisely zer_o _ways to trace this guy.'

The impala hove into view and Dean dug a hand into his pocket, for the keys.  
'You said he had a British accent?'  
'Yeah,' Sam shrugged uneasily. 'Either that or Australian, I couldn't really tell.'  
Dean shook his head. 'I swear, I don't know _what _I pay you for...'

The snipe sailed over Sam's head, though – because he had frozen on his side of the car, frowning.  
'Sam? What is it?' Dean threw out, pausing as he noticed his younger brother's expression.  
Sam looked breathlessly back at him. 'Did you hear that?'  
'Hear what?'  
'Sounded like a – boom...'


	5. Chapter 4: A Scene Of Carnage

**Chapter 4: A Scene of Carnage**

The impala growled, powering along the quiet road, the morning sun flashing brilliantly over the canopy of auburn trees which surrounded them on all sides. Sam squinted anxiously at it, on some level enjoying the beautiful scenery – the warm sun on his face, and the refreshing breeze which streamed in through the open window and fluttered in his ear – despite the fact that they were on the hunt.

'Hey, Dean-' he asked, perturbed. 'Can you smell smoke?'  
Dean was about to answer when they turned a corner, and-

'What the hell...?'

It was like looking at a scene from the apocalypse.

Piles of scrap metal, what looked like the remains of several motorbikes, were fanned out across the road, bent and twisted together, artificial mountains of steel. Some of the piles were crackling with fire, periodically booming and sending smoke clouds into the air. A jeep, half of it missing, had wrapped itself round a tree on the left hand side of the road, its occupants draped inside, thrown out onto the road, or half-through the shattered windshield. There was blood everywhere.

Dean turned off the ignition, and he and Sam traded an ominous look.  
They got out of the car, and advanced on the wreckage.

'Dean, what the hell happened here?' Sam murmured, walking slowly forwards with a concerned frown creasing his forehead.

'I dunno, Sam. But I think I know who it happened to...'  
Sam, mouth twisting squeamishly, shot Dean a puzzled look. 'What d'you mean?'  
'I mean: you're about to step on someone's face...'

Sam looked down just in time to avoid the head, which was lying in his path, and recoiled, exclaiming in revulsion.  
'Urgh!'  
Dean knelt down to examine it (Sam looked away). 'Hey Sam?'  
'What?' he answered through clenched teeth.  
'I think I know where the vampires are...'

This drew Sam's curiosity, and he finally glanced down to see the full set of fangs, gleaming in the head's mouth. They were all down, ready to bite.  
Sam leant down, to see better, eyebrows raised. 'Wow...'  
'Mm-hm,' Dean grunted.

He turned to look up at his brother over his shoulder, from his vantage point crouched near the ground. 'And I'm guessing the rest of 'em are the same.'

'How many are there?' (Sam frowned at the scene with renewed interest).

'I'm thinking fourteen, maybe fifteen,' Dean answered, doing the same thing. He sniffed and levered himself to his feet, wiping his hands on his jeans with a grimace.

'Dean, have you ever heard of this many vampires nesting together, in one place?'  
'No, I haven't.' Dean admitted. 'And I'm betting whoever killed 'em hasn't either, which means he's gotta be one hell of a hunter...'

Sam was about to agree when a scraping sound echoed through the clearing, to their left, and they both snapped around, alert. Dean already had his pistol out, clasped firmly in two hands (a natural pose), and was sighting along it with lips pursed, frowning in concentration. He turned his head, very slightly, to speak to his brother in a terse undertone:  
'Sam, you packing?'  
'No.'  
'Then get behind me.'

It was coming from the mangled jeep, and after a few seconds of tense silence, it started again. The two brothers, watching eagle-eyed, spotted movement, and focused their attention on it. Something was moving behind the jeep, it moved around the back, and into the daylight...

Dean's frown deepened and his lips parted in puzzlement, while Sam's eyes went wide in sudden recognition.

'Dean,' he hissed. 'That's him! The hunter, the guy on the yamaha!'  
'Yeah, I figured.' Dean sighed, and put away his colt with reluctance.

They settled down to watch from a distance, Sam with caution, Dean with his hands in his pockets, and head tilted back against his collar, as if observing an interesting new species in its natural habitat.

The figure hobbling onto the road was covered, from head to toe, in blood and gore and oil – except for his head, where a flattened crown of hair gleamed in the watery sunlight, golden 'til the tips. He had long, narrow, bluey-green eyes, and what could be called a Grecian profile. What made him so mesmerising to watch, though, was the source of his hobble – the large body he was dragging, upright, alongside him. Apparently rigor mortis had already set in, as its stiff arms were waving erratically in the air, as if trying to take off at each lurching step, and its bearer kept tripping up on its rigid legs and stumbling forwards a pace.

It was definitely a corpse, though – living people have more in the way of a head.

The brothers watched him advance, morbidly fascinated with the strange little ballet being played out before them, until Dean, coming to himself, blinked and cleared his throat loudly.

'Need a hand?'  
The figure, who had stopped to look appraisingly at his catch, shook his head, and winced.  
'Nahh, it's a head I need, he's already got a- JESUS!?'  
'He's already got Jesus? Well I hope so, for his sake...' Dean said, deadpan sincerely.

Luke leapt out of his skin, jumping back a foot as he realised what he'd just heard. And who had said it. He stared, wide-eyed at Dean – apparently missing Sam's presence completely.

Unfortunately, his "jump" left the body unsupported, and it fell over, slowly. Dropping like a puppet, it fell to its knees first, then hips, then slumped forwards, hitting the nearest metal-pile with a resounding crash. The silence was interrupted only by a motorbike-wheel – which, apparently still in shape enough to roll, popped out of its crevice in the squashed-metal pile, and did a circuit of the clearing... arching back to land, eventually, at Sam and Deans' feet.

They looked at it.

They looked at him.

He looked at them.

'Um... it's not what it looks like?' Luke hazarded, hopefully.

Dean licked his lips, drawing a hand out of his pocket to gesture with it.

'FREEZE!' All three of them jumped, spun around and found themselves being covered by the gun of a fat cop, who was standing on twitchy feet, licking his lips nervously. He was young, and on edge, and obviously utterly terrified.

Sam & Dean exchanged an agonised glance, wishing they'd taken another route – and, lucky for them they both had their hands in their pockets, because it meant they couldn't instantly raise them, as was their instinct. Both started running possible scenarios through their mind, and, out of habit, fell on the same one.

'Hey!' Dean interrupted, moving to reach his hand into his inside pocket.  
'HANDS WHERE I CAN SEE 'EM!' The cop bellowed.  
'Hey!' Dean cut in again. 'Relax! We're Federal Marshalls. We got this.'

By unspoken agreement, both Winchesters reached into pockets and drew out their fake IDs, revealing them with a practised flick of the wrist. The cop blinked, gulping.

'All-right,' Dean said, taking over the situation. 'Now, we're gonna take this guy in, with or without your co-operation, y'understand?'

The cop nodded, in a daze, but he didn't lower his gun. Dean shot Sam an annoyed glance, impatient with cops. He turned his attention to blond-guy.

'Alright, Tufnel, you're coming with us.'

He strode over behind blond-guy, miming taking out a set of cuffs which he didn't, in fact, have – but hiding this fact from the cop's view.  
'_Work with me here!_' he hissed, in an undertone.  
'Gawd-damn you, pigs! _Gawd-damn you_!' The blond-guy replied with feeling... and a thick Southern accent... and an impressive lack of irony.

'Yeah, yeah, tell it the judge,' Dean said loudly.  
He and Sam started frog-walking the blond-guy back to the impala ("_yew'll never tayke me ulaahv, you basturds!!_") and Dean sighed sadly. 'Breaks my heart to see 'em getting into it this young,' he told a shaken-headed Sam.

They were almost, _almost_ at the car when the cop broke the spell.

'Hey, hey! You're not usin' any cuffs!' he started. 'You're not really Federal Marshalls!'  
'Yeah we are. We totally are.'  
'They _totally _are,' blond-guy assured him – British accent back on.  
The cop did a full face twitch, and the gun game swinging up erratically once more.

-but before the Winchesters could do anything, the blond guy removed himself from Dean's grasp, and strode past them, right up to the cop's gun.

'ON YOUR KNEES!' The cop shouted. 'HANDS ON YOUR HEAD!_ PUT YOUR HANDS ON YOUR GODDAMN HEAD!'_  
'This isn't happening,' the blonde guy said, in an odd, quiet voice.  
'_I SAID ON YOUR KNEES!_'  
'You're imagining this. None of this is real.'  
'ON YOUR- I SAID ON YOUR-' the cop was blinking furiously, swallowing.  
'You pulled an early shift, you're not fully awake.'

What the blond guy said next didn't make sense to either Sam or Dean, because it was in a foreign language – a phlegmy, difficult one, with consonants rattling around his throat. It sounded like a curse. The two brothers shared a wary, forbidding look as the blonde man stepped right up to the barrel of the gun, it was pressing right into his stomach, all the while keeping up his murmuring, in a soft voice, like calming a wild animal.

Just when they thought the cop would snap, and blow him away, the Winchesters noticed the cop's head roll. He folded up, with a grunt; collapsed gently to the floor, in a crumpled heap – leaving his gun behind, in the blond man's hands.

Surprisingly, _he _looked shaken-up, doubling over the gun now grasped in his fingers with a whistle of breath.

The Winchesters stared at him.  
'What the hell was that?' Dean said, to the point.  
'That,' said the blond man. 'Was pushing it.'

He dropped the gun on top of the out-cold cop, and straightened up, with an opened mouth which defied the British convention by being filled with two rows of perfect, dazzlingly-white teeth. Straighter than Dean's, whiter than Sammy's.

'So,' he started, conversationally. 'Where we, fellas?'

After a short brain rewind: 'You'd - just said it... wasn't what it looked like.' Sam pointed out (while Dean was trying to remember).

'Yeah,' his brother cut in. 'And I was about to say it _looks _like you just wasted a whole nest-fulla vampires...'

Luke opened his mouth, about to argue. To his credit, he didn't miss a beat. He hitched his hands onto his hips, shrugging modestly and looking around at the absolute tip he had created.

'Oh, okay – well, then: yes, it's _exactly _what it looks like. And it was _two _nest-fulls, actually...' he laughed, in false arrogance, and started to walk towards them, stopping when he was close enough to talk normally.  
'Only two, huh?' Dean said weakly.  
'I know, it's shockin',' Luke shook his head in disgrace '...What can I say? Should've had more wheatabix this morning. _Stupid..._'

A huff of laughter escaped Sam, and Dean quirked an eyebrow, amused but a little disorientated by this frank admission.

Luke sniffed. 'I take it you two're hunters?'  
'That's right.' Dean smiled.  
'Let me guess,' Luke moved his hands to his jeans pockets. 'You're Shaggy, he's Scooby?'  
'Actually, he's Velma...' Dean said, not looking at Sam's expression. 'I'm Dean, Winchester – this is Sam.' He pointed to his brother ("hey" Sam murmured, managing civility). 'And you are...?'  
'Luke! Luke D. Enfield. I would shake your hands-' Luke spread his two blood-encrusted paws wide, apologetically '-but...'  
'Right, right...' Dean nodded.

He gave Sam a cursory glance (although he didn't realize it, out of a habit of checking Sam was okay after any "situation") and started to walk a little round the clearing.  
'So – Luke...?' he called, as he went. 'All this? This is your mess?'

Luke waved his arms expansively.  
'Afraid so. Sorry about that, by the way – this wasn't your hunt, was it?'

Dean, a little put-off by the fact of Luke's apparent prowess – and maybe wary of new hunters, since they hadn't had such great luck with them in the past – laughed fakely.

'Nah, we were just passing through. Right Sam?'  
'Right...' Sam said distractedly, finally opening his mouth. 'Hey, Luke – is, uh, is that British accent you got there?'  
'It is, yes,' Luke nodded. 'I'm surprised I've still got one, actually – haven't been back there for a while...'

Sam glanced at Dean, eyebrows raised, and (in the same mannerism as his brother) withdrew a hand from one pocket of his hoodie to gesture with it.  
'Really? Why is that?'  
'Well, I'm... on holiday.'

Sam looked at the wreckage, and back at Luke, eyebrows climbing. 'On _holiday_?'  
'Yeah. Pff. Package deal...'

Luke glanced away from Sam at Dean, who was stalking slowly round the site, peering at the floor (Sam realised, with a small private smile, that he was checking to see if Luke really had killed fourteen vampires).  
Luke raised his eyebrows in polite puzzlement. 'So, Sam – why so interested?'  
Sam shrugged. 'Oh... no reason! It's just that, y'know, we don't often... come across... other hunters. Especially ones from the UK.'  
'Fair enough.'

As Sam answered, Luke moved back to his abandoned body and started manhandling it into a new position. It looked like he was trying to move it from the jeep to a busted-up yamaha, and pile them all together. Pausing in his work, to wipe his forehead on his arm, he continued:  
'Hey, how'd you two get started on the old Hunting game?' (Sam's eyes strayed to Dean's back for a second). 'Family tradition?'  
'Something like that.'

Luke seemed to read that Sam wasn't keen to elaborate, and ducked his head with a smile.

'Okay. Well, it was nice meeting you, lads, but if you'll excuse me, I've got a giant bloody mess to clean up...'

Sam looked at Dean. 'Oh, hey – maybe we could help?'  
Dean caught his eye, from across the clearing and the two glared a silent argument at eachother before Luke looked up.

'No, no – appreciate the offer, but I've got it covered. Thanks anyway.'  
'You've got it covered?' Sam asked, curious again.  
'Y-up.' Luke dug out his cell, started squeezing numbers. 'Old mate of mine!'

He put the phone up to his ear, giving Sam the awkward smile of people waiting to talk to someone else. He had a hand hooked on his hip again, digging at his filthy check-shirt, and looked at the floor as he waited. The answering machine clicked into life.  
'Hey! Doc, I need a new appointment. A total overhaul. I'm thinking fourteen sessions ought to do it-'

Sammy stuck out his jaw as Luke rattled off a series of vaguely-concealed terms – which were, he realized, describing the extent of the crash.

Luke finished the phone-call.  
'Hey, lads,' he started. 'I don't want to be cheeky, here, but – can I have a lift?'  
'A lift?'  
'A- a ride?'  
'Oh. Sure,' Sam replied.

Dean, hidden from Luke's view by a metal-pile, spread his hands wide, as if to say "what the hell're you _doing_?" to Sam – and, luckily, Sam (who frowned back) was watching him, so neither saw the well-concealed nervousness which flitted across Luke's face. He cracked a smile.

'You sure it's not too much trouble?'  
'Yes!' said Dean.  
'No,' said Sam, louder, hitching a smile onto his face. 'No. No trouble.'  
Luke snorted. 'Great... Thanks.'

He finished his task, whatever it was meant to be, and nodded at the impala.

'Mind if I chuck my stuff in your boot?'  
Thrown for a second, Sam realised he meant the trunk and nodded. 'Oh! Sure, yeah, go ahead.' (annoying Dean – it was _his_ "boot".)

Luke moved off towards the back of the impala, and Sam, who went to follow, found his arm grazed by a punch from Dean.

'What?'  
'What're you doing?'  
'...What?'  
'Sam, that guy is covered in blood, and gore, and God knows what else!'  
'So?'  
'So?! There is no way in hell that I am letting him _sit in my damn car_!'  
Sam glanced furtively at the open trunk – Luke was hidden from view.  
'What are we supposed to do, Dean? We can't just leave him here!'  
'Why not?!'

Luke flipped the boot open, hastily stowing his bundle of things – which included a large roll of razor-sharp wire, currently shredding the discarded beanie which he was using to handle it – to one side. He glanced around the edge of the open boot, saw the two men deep in some whispered conversation, and got to business. He ran his hands expertly along the edge of the boot, instantly feeling, under his fingernail, what he was looking for. Luckily, they'd left it unlocked – must have been using it. Luke flipped the hidden-compartment lid up, silently, cautiously, and drank in every detail he could.

Those who knew him would've been surprised to see the chirpy smile and sparkle vanish from his face and eyes, in favour of an intense expression of focus. This was a face was you could ascribe the word "hunter" to. There were guns – rifles, wrist-breakers, sawn-offs, pistols – knives, bags of salt, boxes of shells, everything he'd expect. A smaller arsenal than his and Morgan's, but still, not to be sniffed at. A few second's rummaging and he found a certain box he was looking for, emptying the contents into his jeans pocket and replacing everything as he'd found it.

He put the lid back down, and the happy, unassuming smile snapped back onto his face.

'Hey, boys,' he called, peering around the edge of the open boot. 'This is a nice car you got!'

'Yeah,' Dean answered, leaning backwards to get into eyeline. 'And I'd like to keep it that way, thanks.'

Luke came out properly from behind the boot, looking puzzled. He noticed the one his age – Sam – was glaring prudishly at Dean.  
'Come again?'

Dean was sulking, so Sam sighed.

'Uh, do you have a jacket, or something, that you could maybe-' he sighed again at the urgent glare from Dean '-sit on?'  
Luke shook his head apologetically. 'Nah, mate, sorry. Don't wear coats.'  
He looked between the two again.  
'_Psh_,' he thought. '_Poofs, they're so bloody fussy..._'  
'Lover's tiff?' he said, wincing sympathetically.

This got their attention alright. Sam looked blank for a second, and then laughed, trying to throw off his embarrassment – while Dean smirked humourlessly:  
'We're _brothers_.'  
'Ooh, I see!' Luke clicked his tongue and pointed. 'Brothers. Right. Gotcha...'

Shaking his head at the knowing nature of Luke's expression, Dean shot Sam a look which said "this is all _your _fault".

'I tell you what then, fellas...' Luke suggested, starting to grin. 'I think I might have an idea...'

A couple of minutes later, after some heated debate, he was back behind the boot of the impala.  
Stripping...

'Dude!' Dean hissed. 'I am not letting some random naked guy in my car!'  
'Why not?' Sam returned in an undertone. 'You've been naked in there before!'  
'That was different!' Dean whispered defensively. 'There was a chick involved! And what kind of person doesn't wear _underwear_, anyway?'  
'Keep your voice down!'  
'Limey _freaks..._'  
Sam sighed, rolling his eyes heavenward.  
'Look, Dean, I know he's a little – weird, and this whole situation, is-'  
'Friggin fruity!'  
'But this guy's been around here for, what? At least the last coupla days? Maybe he can help us with this mystery-illness case?'

'What?!' Dean reacted vehemently. 'We don't _need_ his help, Sam.'

'Well, no, alright, maybe not-' Sam was patting the air, trying to calm him down. 'But, here's a guy who's new to the country, new to us, and he just saved us from getting shot. Okay? So maybe it'd be nice, for once, if we could just make a _friend_... Please...?'

Oh, so now they were getting down to it. Sammy. So pleased to find a hunter who actually might not turn on you, you want to fall over yourself buddying up to him. Well screw that! But- uh-oh, here came the big brown wide-open eyes. Dean stared into them, feeling the fight go right out of him, as usual. He forgot, sometimes, that Sam had been away at Stanford, and had gotten used to making – having, keeping – actual friends, outside the job. He'd never get it, and never needed to, but on the other hand he couldn't bring himself to force his own choices on Sam, either. That wasn't fair. So what if he felt a tiny flash of... somethin' nasty... that on some level his brother still needed something other than _him? _That wasn't fair either.

Dean grimaced in weary distaste, but conceded, and moved to open the car-door.

'All I'm sayin' is – if he gets stuck to the upholstery, _you're _pulling him off.'  
'R-ight...' said Sam, moving around to the passenger side. 'So – you want me to pull off some random naked guy? In the back of your car?'  
'Yes!'

Sam's eyebrows shot up into his hair, and a smile twitched around his mouth – which deepened the confusion on Dean's face as he tried to work out what he'd just said.

'Hey,' Luke called, before Dean could retort, from his spot behind the open trunk (and their heads snapped round in response). 'Which one of you two's got the biggest feet?'

Sam and Dean looked at eachother, mystified, over the impala's roof.

'Uh... me, I think.' Sam called, still sharing a look with his brother. 'Why?'

Luke's sculpted torso and shoulders appeared, approaching Sam on his side of the car (Sam flinched and looked away). He was, completely and utterly, stark bollock naked.

'You've heard the expression "cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey?"' He asked. 'Well, I don't want to _be _that monkey. Give me one of your socks, I want to do a Chili Pepper.'

A look of dawning horror crept into Sam's eyes as he realised what Luke wanted his sock for. He looked across into Dean's suddenly-beaming face.  
'Well?' Dean lifted his hand off the impala's roof. 'You heard the man, Sammy. Sock it to him. Heheh...'

Sighing like a martyr, Sam balanced on one leg and took off his boot...

A couple of minutes later, Luke was sitting – naked, except for a strategically-placed sock – with his dirty stuff in his lap, in the back of the impala.

Sam was torn between amusement at Dean's face (which was a picture, but not of the kind you'd ever find in a children's book), worry about being caught, and disbelief at the situation they were in. Yeah. Disbelief, verging on mild hysteria. He was also being very careful to not turn around. Not that there was much to see (Luke, on Dean's strict instructions, had his still-bloody hands clasped in his lap, "not touching" anything). Although he was bobbing his head enthusiastically along to the music.

'Y'know, before I came to America, I would've said American cars were shte,' he started up (in the front seat, Sam winced – he didn't need to look at his brother to know he was instantly putting Luke on The List) '-but now I'm here, I get it. I really get it.' Luke was continuing. 'The car becomes your home, right? You know how to handle her, how to get the best _out_ of her, car's got has moods, nuances. When you hitch, being on the road is crap. I mean, it's not good. But in a car like this? It's like, the road you're on, becomes a road of dreams. Y'know?'

Dean glanced thoughtfully in the rearview, forgetting for a moment that he was looking at a random naked dude. Make that the "Possibly On The List" List.

'Huh...' he muttered. 'I think I know what you mean.'  
'Aye,' Luke finished with a philosophical sigh. 'And if you say that to the next chick you meet, the deal'll be as good as done, mate.'  
'...that _is _what I got the car for.'  
'If this backseat could talk, huh?'  
'Oh yeah...'  
'Dude, if _your _backseat could talk, it'd be too _traumatised _to,' Sam pointed out.

Luke laughed – he was one of those people who throw their head back, (like Dean, Sam realised) shoulders hunching forwards, clapping.

And it was infectious, so they did too...

They were leaving the boonies, headed for the city, and the roads were getting busier – so their passenger hunched down in the back seat, a bit, and Dean, feeling edgy, cranked up the radio.

'Actually, lads,' Luke called. 'Much as I love Metallica, could you turn that down for a sec?'  
Dean, jaw clenching, did turn it down, but stared at his unwanted passenger in the rear-view mirror. 'Why?'  
'Just got to make a phone-call.'  
'To who?'  
'Morgan.'  
'Who's he?'  
'He's a she.'  
'She hot?' Dean looked mildly interested in the mirror.  
There was a short beat as Luke grinned to himself.  
'Morgan? Christ no - but you've got to have someone to make the tea, haven't you?'  
'So she's a tough bitch huh?'  
'...She's my sister.'  
'Oh...'

Dean's face fell. He opened his mouth awkwardly, about to apologise for himself, but Luke had already started dialling – so he glanced across, instead, and saw that Sam was shaking his head at him. 'What?' Dean mouthed. Sam rolled his eyes.

'Heya Morgy, it's me,' Luke was saying into his mobile phone. 'No need to come and get me, I'm getting a lift with two random blokes I met on the side of the road... Yup, mm-hm, mm-hmm... Yeah, I know, but they say they're straight, and I believe 'em... I can't hitch-hike, woman, there's no one around! You- wh- j- look- _will you just shut up for a second?! _They're giving me a lift back to the motel- you don't mind, d'you lads? Thanks- so where-ever you are, you can turn around...'

He stopped, the vaguely-exhausted expression of the ear-bashed male everywhere covering his face as he listened to his sister rant.

'What do you mean "I'm burning the next one"-' he said eventually. 'I don't burn our kills, Morgy-' He had to jerk the receiver away from his ear as a torrent of abuse reached him.

Dean looked in the mirror again, eyebrows raised.  
'So Luke,' he said airily. 'I'm guessin' you don't get on well with women...?'

Luke grimaced. 'Oh no, I love women! It's just this one I've got a problem with...' he went back to his conversation. 'Look, Morgy, I was just- yeah, alright- I know, I know, "it's crass to conform to 50s sexual politics, even if I _am _a"- hang on, _I am not a wanker!_'

In the front seat, Dean turned to Sam.  
'You know, I envy that brother-sister relationship some people have – you can really feel the love...'

'Shut-up!' Luke was saying. 'Look, Morgy, we have an agreement, alright? I kill 'em, you grill 'em. You know you're much better with fire than me... Honestly, I'm not bullshtting you, you are! Look at the way you blew up that possessed-bakery last month – that was inspired, that was. Haven't heard such a racket since we chased that fire-demon, into that fire-works factory in Beijing...'

Luke grinned in the mirror, miming chalking a point up to himself as his sister's voice lowered.

'So, we're cool? Good good. You know you love me really. Ta-ra...'  
He hung up, sighing heavily. 'Tsh! Word of advice, lads, never have a sister.'  
'Time of the month, huh?' Dean hazarded.  
Luke snorted. 'Aye...'


	6. Chapter 5: Zippo, Cherry & NatureBoy

**Chapter 5: Zippo, Cherry & Nature-Boy**

Some time later, the impala pulled into the parking-lot of a local motel – The Rainbow Inn – the very same one, in fact, that they were staying at. This did nothing to improve Dean's outlook, especially when Luke tried to get out of the car, still naked.

'Woah! Dude, where you going?'

Luke stopped with his fingers on the door-handle, and gave this some thought.

'Well, in the big scheme of things, Hell, but right now, my room.'

'Woah, just – stop and think about this for a sec, okay?' Dean said angrily, holding the door shut from the inside. 'You're a naked dude, covered in blood, walkin' around in broad daylight, alright? People – will – notice, it's not exactly somethin' they see every day.'

Sam nodded in agreement, struck dumb at Luke's apparent disregard for – well, everything.

'Really?' Luke asked, surprised. 'What do these peope _do _with their Friday nights?'

'Look,' Sam started, mediating. 'Why don't I just go to your room, pick up whatever you need, and you can change in the car?'

'Fine with me.'

Sam got out of the impala.

'Dean, you coming?' he asked his brother.

'No way.'

'Why not?'

Dean jerked a thumb over his shoulder. 'Cause I'm not leavin' _Nature Boy _alone in my car.'

'Dean, I really think I'm gonna need your help...'

Dean finally got that his brother was hinting he might need some help "looking" for things in Luke's room, and shrugged – 'Oh! Right, sure...' – and got out of the car.

Luke threw his room-key out of the window to Sam, who was just about to walk away – and Dean paused, crouched down with his hands on the open window.

'Just... promise you won't – touch – anything?' he shot at Luke, almost pleadingly.

'Right-o.'

Dean nodded, patted the door, almost as if in apology, and stood.

He exhaled shakily, and walked around the hood to Sam.

'I'm sure he'll be fine,' he comforted.

'It's not him I'm worried about...' Dean replied, darkly.

'So, Dean- Dean?' Sam had to start again, as his brother was looking over his shoulder at the car.

'Huh?'

'What d'you think?'

'About what?'

'About the...naked wonder...?'

'Oh, right, uh... I think he's _insane_.'

Sam sighed. 'No, Dean – I mean, d'you think he can help us?'

'I dunno. Seems to me he's a shoot-first, dont-ask-any-questions kinda guy, y'knkow? So, I'm thinking mystery-illnesses aren't his kinda gig.'

Sam continued walking in silence. 'What?' Dean said, noting this.

'I was just wondering...' Sam murmured. 'What he did to that cop. You think it was... something good? Like, Hoodoo spellwork, not anything...'

'Evil?'

Sam breathed heavily through his nose.

Dean shrugged as they reached the sheltered walkway, overhanging the doorways into each room, looking down at the key in Sammy's hand to compare it to room-numbers.

'Well,' he muttered as they stopped at the right one. 'Maybe his stuff'll tell us whether or not you're barking up the right tree...'

Luke's room was the one on the very end of the motel, an l-shaped room because it was on the corner. Dean did a quick check of their surroundings – out of force of habit, he couldn't help entering someone else's room without automatically feeling up to no good – looking left to right, before Sammy turned the key in the lock.

They found themselves in a spacious but stuffy motel room, with everything done in shades of faded blue - navy-blue rug, textured wallpaper, bedding, even lighting. There were twin beds facing them, and one half of the room was partitioned off by a screen which seemed to be made of blue-glass bottle-bottoms fixed in a pattern of retro circles. Beyond it they could see a table and chairs, small kitchenette, the usual.

Dean walked slowly forwards, in front of Sammy, mouth puckered, eyes roving over everything. He stopped dead as they rounded the corner of the L, and his eyes lit up – Sammy, with a familiar feeling of suspicion, followed his gaze. There was a woman there, with her back to them. She had one of the chairs tilted onto its back legs, positioned between the second bed (covered in dismantled gun-parts) and the table – and was leaning her weight heavily, precariously, on one elbow, propped on the table, reaching for something there.

Dean had his head tilted to one side, taking in the long, lean body, and tight ass (Sam smacked him on the arm).

'Hey,' she said, without turning round – in a dinstinctively husky, broken voice. 'Have you seen my beaver?'

Looking guilty and panicked, as if she had somehow read his mind, Dean's eyebrows shot up, and he coughed. 'Uh-' Under different circumstances, the expression on his brother's face would've been hysterical to Sammy. Circumstances where, for example, he _didn't _turn back to find the woman training a pair of cocked hand-guns on them, seemingly drawn from thin air. What followed was possibly the strangest set of greetings Sammy had ever heard exchanged. Her eyes wandered from him, to Dean, where she drew her head back in surprise – mirroring Dean's mannerism exactly.

'Zippo?' She said, an inscrutable look gleaming in her eye, around her lips.

'Cherry...' Dean grinned.

'...Dean?'

_It had been a couple of nights ago..._

Sam was poring diligently over a map, trying to find the spots Joshua had suggested, slowly lifting his dimpled tumbler to his lips, absorbed in his task – and Dean, sitting facing him, shook his head. He took a sip and put his own drink down, gazing speculatively round the bar. Sam was only distracted, puppy-eyed, by a familiar hissing tone from his brother, and a glancing punch on the arm:

'_Dude!_' Dean had his face contorted in relish, head tilted to the side and lips pouting as he sucked in his breath – and Sam followed his gaze, knowing what he would see.

The woman was pushing sideways past the people milling in front of them, just enough of them to make it awkward. She was trying to get away with two pints in hand, held at chest-level – but to either side, because of what Dean would've called the sweet rack. Long luxuriant black hair, naturally tousled, like she'd just come from the salon or a wind-tunnel. Naturally tanned, like maybe she had Mediterranean blood in her or something. Extraordinarily wide-set, liquid-black eyes, outlined in kohl, and a full pouty mouth, giving her a kind of feline edge.

She was wearing a black biker's jacket, but switched up – it was close-fitted, with elbow length sleeves (he noticed these things, because Jess had always used to quiz him on her clothes), over a clingy red T (the top buttons undone) and jeans. Sultry, super-model tall, cut, and striking enough that even Sammy (who wasn't interested in a hook up right now, or, you know, ever) raised his eyebrows in surprise.

As they watched, a waitress, shrieking with laughter, jumped back too quickly, and bumped into her, knocking one of the woman's drinks everywhere. The woman smiled murderously to herself, put the half-spilled pint slowly down, on the nearest table, and, without hesitation, turned round and up-ended the other over the woman's head.

Sam's eyebrows disappeared into his hair, and Dean threw back his head, howling with laughter as the outraged gasps reached them. Dean kept one twinkling green eye on the situation as he knocked back some of the dregs of his own beer. The soaked woman looked ready for a cat-fight, breathing like a bull with shoulders hunched and witchy fingers flexing – but, sadly, Dean's mark muttered something to make her slink off instead, looking worried.

The woman pivoted her head to follow the waitress, menacingly – and Sam was reminded of his brother, facing down, seeing off some threat. Job done, she clicked her neck, bitterly downed the rest of the half-spilled pint, and, with a scowl at her onlookers, started to push for the bar again.

'...Think I better help her out,' Dean said, signalling the end of the show.

He was trying to sound gallant and self-sacrificing, but was convincing no one (least of all Sam) and grinned despite himself. He copied her and downed his drink, scooting round the people gathered at the bar, glass-less, and leaving Sam to do his researching.

Morgan slotted more easily into place in front of the bar this time, and even got a stool. She enjoyed the wariness in the bar-keeper's eyes and decided to stay there for a bit – order a round at her own leisure, make the sod squirm. She slipped her pack of silk-cut – white minimally-packaged box, bare but for a royal-purple square – out of one pocket, and threw a fag expertly into her mouth.

She was just patting herself down, for her lighter, when a waft of leather washed over her, and a flame sparked into life right in front of her face. It belonged to the zippo of a foreign hand, with a silver ring on its forefinger.

Morgan let her fag be lit, inhaled, and then let her eyes stray to her saviour.

(Dean noticed that the cigarette moved strangely in her mouth, and filed it away under "stuff to ask about later").

There was a man standing next to her – correction, a very _handsome _man – closer than she'd have liked, because there wasn't much room. Wearing an old-style, smoky brown-leather jacket. Christ, how noir – he was only missing the raked fedora and the messily-untied tie. If he called her "toots" (and he looked the type) there'd be hell to pay. Zippo leaned on the bar, exposing a broad stretch of sculpted chest, under his black t-shirt, and a gold pendant (on another length of leather, round his neck) swung forward. Broad shoulders, too. Naturally good posture. Well-hewn jaw, stubble, strong chin, big clear-green eyes, gorgeous lips, quiffed hair. An American classic, in fact – and she immediately shut down the side of herself which should've been happy about it.

He cracked a winning smile, obviously aware of how good-looking he was, and put his lighter away with a flourish.

'Hey, I saw what happened back there. Buy y'a drink?'

'Did you see how many pints I was carrying? 'Cause there were two.'

'That's okay, I'll pay for both,' he shot her a smaller, still-winning smile. Flirty.

The barkeep, over-eager to get rid of her, she thought, leant forwards attentively.  
'Same again,' Morgan nodded, resigned.

She waited while he served up the drinks, and while Zippo launched into the self-effacing small talk shtick.

'Look, mate,' she interrupted, as the drinks arrived. 'No offense. I appreciate the effort and everything, and I'm flattered, but, I'm kind of here with someone-'

'Is he as good-looking as me?' he asked, flashing that crooked little flirty-smile again.

'No. He's better.'

'Well- hey, I get it. No problem,' Zippo cut in, half-smiling: obviously, clumsily unused to this kind of rejection. Which made it twice as horrible.

Morgan scooped up the pints as they were planted in front of her, and paused to give him the once-over, one last time.

(She looked him up and down, slowly, speculatively – like someone eying up a car they were about to buy. Just like he had all the women in the room. Boots, long-jeans, package, abs, pecs, finally face. Damn, this was the most blatant, unashamed check-out he'd had tonight, and coming from this chick, he enjoyed it.)

'_Full marks _for presentation though.' She said, regretfully, and disappeared off, into the crowd.

Dean snorted, leant admiringly on his elbow as he watched her leave. So she was with someone else, but still... open-minded. Hard to take it as a knock back when it went down that way.

The bartender, who (he'd noticed) had been checking her out the entire time, planted a drink down next to him. Dean reached for his wallet, but the guy interrupted:

'On the house, buddy – that took guts,' and Dean smiled tightly at him, over his shoulder.

'Shoulda seen the guy she came in with,' the bartender continued, dispensing more drinks for his other customers. 'Younger guy, handsome. Boy toy.'

'Yeah?' Dean said, kind of annoyed that he was butting in, and surprised – he'd had her pegged as an older-guy type.

'Yeah. _Totally _pussy-whipped, man... still, you gotta envy him though. Tappin' that?'  
The bartender whistled, and Dean gargled a laugh into his freebie, smacking his lips in reflection.

'That cigarette,' he prompted after a while. 'It was – looked like it was – floating round her mouth. Without her lips touching it.'

The bartender nodded as he spoke, pulling over an ashtray which rattled across the counter, and jabbing a finger at it. Dean peered inside and saw what looked like a cherry-stem, tied in a knot, laid out among the ash.

'Did that with her own tongue!' The bartender revealed. 'She bet me the price of the drinks she couldn't do it, and I-'

'-just wanted to watch her suck it off?' Dean cracked, and they both nodded – a moment of shared male appreciation.

'Yup,' the bartender agreed. 'Thing was, she didn't tell me her tongue was split clean down the middle! Worked that thing prettier n' a twenty dollar whore. She saw you comin' man.'

'_Oh, I wish_,' Dean thought.

He picked up his freebie with a quick smile, and left.

Something was bothering him, about the situation, but he shook it off as another thought occurred to him: _Man-eater on the loose, likes younger guys. Better not leave Sammy alone. Uh... For his own good..._

And he wove a path back to their research-table...

Sensing, as younger brothers sometimes do, that Dean wasn't quite paying attention to what was important, Sammy cleared his throat.

'Dean?'

Dean snapped out of his flashback to find himself still under the barrel of a gun. Yeah, she recognised him. Was she going to cut him slack? Fat chance.

'So,' she began. 'Are you two going to introduce yourselves, or am I going to have to blow you a new one?'

Dean glanced at Sam – '_Man, what a bitch_' he said with his eyes – and turned back with a smile. He waved his hand.

'We're friends of your brother's.'

Morgan smiled coldly. 'Try again.'

'A-lright. We're Dean, and Sam, Winchester, friends of your brother – Luke – and we have him outside, in our car. Happy?'

She looked between them. 'Why didn't Luke come in here to tell me that himself?'

Dean opened his mouth, searching – he looked at Sam.

'He – kinda... doesn't have much clothing... on... right now...' Sam awkwardly explained.

Morgan's eyelids flickered wearily.

'Sounds like Luke. Alright. Give him this.' She threw a pair of trousers, which were draped across the back of the chair, at them – practically hitting Dean in the face. 'And tell him – if he's not in here in ten seconds, it's Mad Maxine time...'

The door clicked shut behind them.

'She seemed nice,' Dean muttered sarcastically as they started walking back to the car.

Sam smiled. 'I'm sure she's just worried about her brother, Dean.'

'Yeah, well, that's no excuse for being a bitch.'

'So, you're not just mad that she didn't like you, then...?' Sam asked shrewdly.

'Whatever, man...'

They reached the car, and Dean banged on the roof, throwing the bathrobe through the open window.

'Alright, Luke, your sister's here – let's go! ...Luke!'

When there was no reply, he ducked down and looked into the back of the car.

It was empty.

'_Son-_of-a-bitch!' he groaned, spinning around, eyes roving the parking lot.

'Where is he?' Sam asked, looking around too.

'He can't have gotten far!'

'Uh, Dean – we may have a problem...'

'You think?!'

'No – look.'

Sam pointed. Lying, right in the middle of the backseat, was a discarded sock...

Morgan stayed still for a moment, and then lowered her guns. She was strung out from the tension, from not sleeping, and from nervousness about Luke, so she wasn't thinking when she leant against the screen – on the other side of which was a loaded pump-action...


	7. Chapter 6: The Beginning & The End

**Chapter 6: The Beginning & The End**

A shot echoed round the parking lot.

The two brothers looked at each other, and spoke in unison: 'Morgan!'

They sprinted down the sheltered walkway, burst in through the door, guns up, and found themselves looking on what was – even by the standards of their long and varied career – a weird scene. Morgan was still standing by the table, pistols still cradled in her hands (especially since they were now aiming their own). That was as it has been before - but now, a huge smoking chunk had been taken out of the screen on one side.

The smoke settled.

'Gesundheit?' Dean offered, shrugging, with a semi-smile on his face.

'Where's my brother?'

'He's- uh, we... we lost him.'

'That was careless of you.'

'Look who's talking...' Dean observed the half-smashed screen.

'That was an accident.'

'So was this.'

'Me takin' your head off won't be. Drop your gun.'

'Ladies first.'

'Oh, what a gentleman.'

'Luke told us his sister was a real bitch. You must be Morgan.'

She smiled. 'And _you _must be Butt-head. I hope your-' she glanced down '-M19 Colt doesn't have sentimental value, because I'm about to take it from you.'

'O-h, sweetheart,' Dean smirked, shaking his head. 'I would _love _to see you try.'

It shouldn't be possible to suggest with your eyes that you'll only be spending time with someone while you're scraping them off the bottom of your shoe – but she did. After a moment, Sam felt the urge to wave a hand in between their locked gaze, but, as it happened he didn't need to – because they were at that moment upstaged. By Luke, of course. He burst in through the door, now loosely wearing a white, slightly-too-small bathrobe, with towelled sleeves rolled up to reveal his tanned forearms, and wove in between the three gun-persons, totally preoccupied with his mobile-phone.

He meandered right through the lines of fire, oblivious to the tension, and without looking up. Morgan's eyes flickered to the ceiling, with a dull, pained glint, and Sam thought he recognised the signs of someone counting to ten in their head. As Luke passed his sister, she raised one of her guns – the smaller one, trained on Sam – slightly, lowering it again as he moved behind her. Sam had a fleeting impression of gates closing, or bars coming down around Luke, a definite sense of "he's with me, now" and realised that Morgan, and the situation, had relaxed a little.

But not completely.

'Luke,' Morgan finally said, and he jumped.

'What? Oh.' He took it all in, with exaggerated slowness. 'O-kay... What the hell-'

'-_IS GOING ON_?!' The motel-owner shrieked, standing in the open doorway.

Sam and Dean instinctively spun around at the sound of her voice, (guns mercifully hidden in pockets), and when they looked back, mouths open, about to launch into an elaborate explanation, they found that _her _guns had disappeared. Morgan was standing there, cool as a cucumber, for all the world as if there wasn't a large half-naked man standing two feet away, hands covering his (probably-not-long-to-remain) unmentionables.

Luke slapped on a winning smile. 'Sorry!' he called, in his best Gosh-I'm-Apologetic English voice.

He nodded at the gaping chunk of missing screen.

'I... I had a hard-on and I turned around too fast...'

The tiny woman stared, looking him slowly up and down. Her eyes came to rest (well, naturally) on his clasped hands. They were still covered in blood from the vampires.

'Sir, you're bleeding!' she cried.

Luke, misunderstanding her, threw up his hands to look. '_Am I?! _Where?! Oh I see what you-'

There was a thump. The landlady had fainted.

'Oh, bugger,' Luke sighed, looking up at the noise. 'Why do they always do that?'

Sam, who was now looking pointedly at the ceiling, said:

'I think you're too big- I mean, too...much for her, Luke.'

He felt heat flush in his cheeks, and was glad he wasn't looking down to see the expression on Dean's face.

'Story of my life...' Dean muttered. 'So what're we gonna do about the little woman?'

Morgan shrugged, un-bothered.

'Be a darling and cart her off to reception, would you?'

Dean frowned. 'Why should we-'

'I _said_: be a darling and cart her off to reception, _would you_...' Morgan repeated in a dangerous tone of voice.

Dean looked at Luke.

'Best do what she says, lads,' he said, bracingly. 'Morgy can be a bit Jewish about things when she's miffed...'

'Jewish?' Sam asked, perplexed.

'Bite your head off,' Luke mouthed – though he stopped hastily when his sister turned around to glare at him.

'Miffed?' Dean asked, in a tone of voice that suggested he probably didn't want to know.

'Never mind...'

'Are you waiting for her to grow wheels, or what?' Morgan prompted.

Rolling his eyes ungraciously, Dean, with a "why is it always me?" expression on his face, crouched down alongside Sam, and they lifted the woman into the air.

'What the hell kinda family _is _this?' he said to Sam as they were carrying her back to reception.

Sam, as nonplussed as he, shrugged. 'A European one?'

'Right,' Dean shrugged his eyebrows. 'Thanks...'

Sam's forehead wrinkled in thought as they maneuvered a particularly tricky doorway.

'Hey, Dean... d'you think there'reEuropean _women _like that? Like Luke, I mean?'

Dean paused. 'Oh, _God _I hope so...'

'Got that out of your system, dear?' Luke asked as the door snapped shut, again.

'Don't push it, Luke,' Morgan growled.

Her brother ignored her. 'I liked the way you made yourself nicely forgettable and inconspicuous there, by the way. Well done!'

Morgan was appalled. 'Look who's talking!'

Her guns had lowered the instant the door closed, and she tucked them back away, into hidden places on herself. Despite the fact that her own hands were still mucky from sorting out her mark, last night, Morgan grabbed her brother's face in them, pushing his chin aside to survey the damage. Luke was about to cut in with a little-brother comment about possessiveness, but then he noticed the curiously intense look on Morgan's face, staring hard at the cuts on his neck, jaw, the grazes on his elbows where he'd come off the bike. She was staring, so she wouldn't have to think.

He reckoned he knew why she was being short with Sam & Dean.

'Morgy,' Luke muttered, softly. 'I'm fine. I'm alright, honest.' He pried her hands off his forearm, which she was lifting up to see his elbow, and she dropped them to her sides. They stayed close, until Morgan (still not meeting his eyes) gave a jerky nod, and took a step back.

'You should put some savlon on that.'

She dropped, heavily, back onto her chair.

'So I see you've met my darling sister, then?'

Dean and Sam were back in the room, exchanging a dark look. Guns discarded, Morgan was now cleaning out her nails with the blade of a very serious-looking knife.

'Y-eah,' Sam smiled unconvincingly. 'We did that. Nice to meet you, by the way.'

She flicked a spot of gore into the waster paper-bin with a _ding_. 'Charmed.'

There was an awkward silence as nobody in the room talked about the fact that there was still a half-naked man, standing, in the room.

Morgan sighed. 'Oh, for God's sake, Luke, put some pants on or somethin.'

There was a rustling sound.

'_Not _on your head...'

There was another rustling sound.

'That's better.'

Luke paused thoughtfully. 'You know... technically, you could say they're _still on _my-'

'Dont. Even,' Morgan warned him, pointing a finger.

Luke pressed his lips shut, with exaggerated care, and smiled politely at Sam and Dean.

'Well, I'll leave you three to get acquainted, shall I?' he said, beaming. 'I'm going to have a shower.'

'Wait-' Sam said as Luke started to walk out of the door. 'Luke... why did you leave the car?'

'I dunno. Itchy feet?'

'So why did you take the - sock – off?'

Luke shrugged. 'Oh, well, _that _was because I had itchy-' 'H-okay! Thanks for sharing,' Dean interrupted. 'I thought you were gonna have that shower now?'

Luke nodded. 'Aye. Take a seat, make yourselves at home – I'm sure if you ask her nicely, Morgy'll get you a drink.'

He disappeared into the bathroom, and Dean turned round to catch sight of the murderous glance being thrown his way by Morgan – one which suggested a definite Semitic quality surrounding the subject of drink-getting.

'That's okay. Really. I'm good...' he said, smiling fakely.

'Glad to hear it.'

There was another awkward pause, in which Sam shared eye-contact with Dean.

'Anyway,' Dean said. 'We should get going.'

'Got far?' Morgan prompted.

'Uh, nope, as a matter of fact we're staying right here.' Dean pointed, smiling again.

'We are?'

'Yeah we are.'

'Oh, right.' Morgan remarked. 'See you later then, boys.'

'Uh, I just have one question-' Dean said, as they turned to leave.

'What?'

'Earlier, when you said, "have you seen my beaver"...'

Morgan pointed at the floor, near their feet, where a chunk of polished wood – the lower component of a dismantled rifle (in pieces on her bed), necessary to fit the whole thing together – was lying. The ribbed cross-hatching made it look just like a beaver's tail.

'Beaver _fore-end_, genius,' Morgan said, simply.

Dean & Sam paused to look at each other, outside their door, before they went back to their own room.

'Well _I _like her,' Dean started in defensively, which elicited a shaken head and a faint smile from Sam, turning away, as he stuck his hands back in his hoodie pockets. He was utterly unsurprised. Dean had been completely ready to hate this family, messing up his car, stealing his hunt, threatening to shoot him, but now there was a hot woman involved, he seemed strangely upbeat.

'Dude, she hates you,' Sam pointed out, struggling not to laugh as they strolled once more along the sheltered walkway.

'Details, Sammy, _details_,' Dean countered with a flourish and a smile. 'Hey, y'know what, I'm in the mood for coffee.'

'You're always in the mood for coffee, you're an addict.'

'So?!' Dean's eyes widened. 'I'm taking it one day at a time, and _you _should be more supportive.'

'Whatever. I'm going to get some sleep.'

'Alright. Hey, _hey_-' Dean stopped him with a hand on his chest, concerned, '-promise me you won't party _too _hard. I don't wanna end up diggin' you n' the TV out of some swimming pool...'

Sam, caught-out by his fake concern, screwed up his face and huffed. 'F.O.'

Grinning, Dean threw their own room-key up in the air for Sam to catch, jauntily walked back a step and turned on his heel to go...

Luke kept an ear to the bathroom door, and waited until he'd heard the two hunters leave before spinning round and grasping the toilet seat. For a moment he had to struggle to keep his nausea at bay, eyes pressed tight shut so he wouldn't have to look at the gore caking the hands before him. He let out a strangled groan, trying to ignore the burning in his sinuses.

'Luke?' Morgan's voice filtered through the door. 'What're you doing in there?'

He pushed himself to his feet, with a concerted effort, popped the toilet seat up and let loose.

''Ave a guess!' He called back, peeing as loudly as he could manage.

'Well hurry up, I need to wash.'

One hot, blissful shower later, Luke emerged from the bathroom, barefoot, in a different pair of faded jeans, scuffed at the hem, and his favourite battered old, black hoodie. He was towelling off his hair, which had sprung into the usual blonde, angelic, slightly-effeminate waves either side of his face. Morgan got up from her chair, where she had finished re-assembling a beautiful old rifle, and dodged around him with a cursory "stuff's on the table" before disappearing into the shower herself.

Luke collapsed gratefully onto his bed, tucking up one knee and putting a hand behind his now pleasantly-dry head. He stared thoughtfully up at the ceiling, which had some kind of ridged paint-effect going on, and rubbed at the stubble-free edge of his chin. His long fingers found a length of leather round his neck, and swung it around until they found the pendant. It was an old Roman coin, two headed (obviously someone cocked up in its making, long ago), with holes drilled into either side to keep it attached. Luke's thumb had worn a smooth curve into the cheek of one the faces, and that's what he fiddled with now.

He always fiddled with it when he was worried.

He was worried was because of the very reason he'd dragged Morgan to Worcester in the first place. It had been, oh, about a week ago now...

The exit was in a booth of its own, about the size of a phone-box, which jutted out from the end of the building, a cheap add-on. Unsurprising, as half these buildings were factory-built, originally.

A man appeared inside it, dawdling casually as he extended a hand, light glinting off the metal ring on his finger, as it pressed against the 'no smoking' sticker on the glass door. This one had ancient hinges, which squeaked as the man pushed through, into the cold night air. He ducked his chin, dropping at a leisurely pace down the couple steps, and buried his hands in the pockets of the brown-leather jacket he had on, hunched inside the collar against the cold.

He stamped, and glanced both ways up and down the street.

To his left, a neon sign jutted out, glaringly, over the broad stretch of sidewalk – casting its light on a matching _Coca Cola _vending machine, below – and a string of bushes, frosted with snow, dotted the outer wall, in between fancy benches. They were bathed in a festive glow from the lights of the multiple dinky windows, and the stripe of red neon, from the sign on top of the roof. Just enough to illuminate the name, painted in old-style red lettering, on the shiny wall, beneath the windows: '_Boulevard Diner_.'

It was one of those old-school ones – red&white striped awning, "booth service" (it was painted above the steps he'd just descended). Probably still had the wheels on underneath.

The neon-stripe on the barrelled roof curled around a clock, right in the centre there, its hands pointing to 11:50 – pm, it was that dark outside. This was a busy-looking road, but getting quieter as night came on. The man glanced at the clock, and then behind him, through the windows, at another young man (tall enough to still be seen – a mop of brown hair over a matching hoodie) who was paying.

So he didn't see the figure who approached him, from behind, until it cleared its throat.  
'Dean.'

He spun around, quizzical scowl back on. '...Yeah?'

Sam retrieved his change, smiled politely (but a little nervously) at the Marilyn-Monroe-haired old waitress – who'd been smiling, continually, at him, the whole time they were there – and turned to go. He left via the same exit as his brother, dropped the steps, and stopped dead.

'Dean?' His voice sounded tiny in the night. Until he roared. '_DEAN!_'

He was sprawled, gracelessly, on his back, in the fringe of snow which rang along the diner wall.

Blue lipped.

Eyes open, staring at the sky.

Clearly dead.

The sound of a heart, exploding into pieces, rang in the metal hinges and down the street, it blossomed through the silent, standing night and raced the many, many miles...

...to where Luke awoke, with a start, as suddenly as if he'd just been doused with icy water, and Morgan – who was sitting in the driver's seat, beside him – jerked her head around.

He blinked, eyes covered with a film of water as the excruciating grip of his headache faded, and slouched back in relief. He was wedged into the corner of his comfortably-padded seat, one elbow propped up on the door, hand buried in his fair hair as a joist to his sleeping head. Leaning against the window, he let the glass cool his aching forehead – still all tensed up. Cold from chill outside air, which tickled in a breeze from the crack he had the window opened to. It would have been freezing, except the Bronco's heating was on.

Damn. He'd been so comfortable, too.

He felt a hand fall on his shoulder – surprisingly gently, given who it belonged to.  
'Lu? Ti'n iawn?'

_Are you alright?_ She'd slipped into Welsh, an inadvertent code for "worried and concerned" more so than she'd ever openly admit to. Luke pushed his hand backwards, sweeping his hair off his face, and shot Morgy a reassuring smile.

'M'alright,' he answered, nodding.

'Are you sure?'

'Yeah.'

'Are you going to tell me what you dreamt about?'

'N-ope.'

He was shaken up, as usual – didn't want to meet her eyes just yet – so he looked gingerly out of the window instead. They were pulled over in a lay-by, somewhere sunny but nondescript, so she could have a fag and a break from driving. The folksier Zepp songs – Ramble On, Stairway to Heaven – turned low on the CD player. As close to musac as this family, and this woman, came.

Luke straightened up in his seat, wanting to seem finer than he felt. He realised that the bacony-smell inside the car wasn't entirely from the silk-cut Morgan had slotted between two fingers, but from a brown-paper bag on the console between them. She'd obviously stopped off at a service station, while he was sleeping, and got them food. A feeble attempt at being maternal (she'd never actually stoop so low as _cooking_) which made him smile.

Ruined now, of course, since he felt sick as a dog – but Luke dug out one of the cokes and took a sip. Perhaps only he, in the world, could've noticed the veiled sorrow in his sister's eyes – behind the fierce, accusing look she was giving him, "why won't you tell me?" it said. She knew what he was playing at, just as well as he did.

Luke stopped drinking, and put the coke down.

'S'flat.'  
'Hmm,' she hummed, unconvinced.

He dug a hand into his jeans' pocket and whipped out his mobile, squeezing the buttons from memory. He sniffed as he waited for the person on the other end to pick up, fiddling with the edge of the dash so he wouldn't have to answer the questions Morgan was barely holding in.

The phone clicked on: 'Olufunmilola, you bastard! How are you?'

'_Luke Enfield,_' came the reply, amused at the use of his long name. '_I'm good. How are you?_'

'...Can't complain, Doc, can't complain. Listen, mate, can you do me a favour, we're sort of on the go right now.'

'_Of course._'

'Can you Google a diner for me? The Boulevard.'

'_Can I ask why?_'

'You can. Can I not answer?'

A weary chuckle. _'Sure...'_

Morgan examined her brother's profile – as he spoke, cryptically, to their 'tech' guy ('_clock on the roof, bushes outside?_'). Not a favourite of hers, but what could she do? So she just watched him while he was distracted, mussy-haired and oozing a haze of serenity now he was half-awake. Especially with odd curdles of her cigarette smoke curling in the air around his head, illuminated by the sun. No – _absolutely no – _concept of his own beauty, she thought (with a little hint of pride). She was _almost _sure he had no clue.

She'd pulled into the gas-station about half an hour ago, killed the engine and got out to put some atrociously-pricey petrol in. And she'd noticed, whilst doing so (and as she came back from paying), a bored teenager in the next car over. Her head tilted to one side, cheek resting on her hand – gazing eagerly, dreamily at him the whole time, while he was unaware. So Morgan had got into the car, stretched a hand in front of his sleeping face and waved it violently – so that the girl jumped out of her skin and flushed bright red.

Served her right. Bint.

Then, five minutes ago, Luke's breathing had become haggard, and he'd started twitching feverishly in his sleep – so she'd pulled over again. Minus the idiot-gawking audience this time.

Luke was hanging up, so she flicked her fag-end decisively out of the window.

'Where to?'

'Worcester City.'

'Where?'  
'Massachusetts.'  
'Right.'

No questions asked, after all. He was grateful for that.

When Morgan finished in the bathroom – in a dark red v-neck and black cords - drying off her own hair with the last remaining towel, her little brother was sitting bolt upright on his bed, staring at the door. She sat down on her own, regarding him warily and waiting for him to speak.

Luke blinked, managed to bring his head back from miles away.

'Where did Sam and Dean say they were going?'

'They didn't. Why? What is it?'

Luke shook his head, swallowing uneasily and shuffling off the end of his bed. He was still staring at the door, head tilted slightly to the side, as if listening to something far off. His head righted itself, almost as if it was a separate creature, not a part of him.

'Morgy,' Luke muttered. 'Get your gun.'


	8. Chapter 7: All My Soul Within Me Burning

**Chapter 7: All my Soul Within Me Burning**

She was lost. Completely lost. In a haze of agony, slipping in and out of a fog of unconsciousness, her only relief from the pain. Pain: firing up and screaming down veins, all over her body; jarring in waves from her open, stinging wounds. Unbearable, inescapable. She wanted to scream, but wouldn't give _him _the satisfaction. She wanted to climb out of her own body and at least bring an end, but this monster was going to keep her here – helpless as a kitten, her bloodied head swaying, as she was cornered by a snake. She tried to look at him, to understand, or at least seek pity – but there _was _none, in his empty, reptilian eyes.

Hypnotized, she watched the blade, that horrible object of fear, weaving closer.

He was _making_ _sure _she knew it was coming. Humans. So fucking sick.

Before she could reason, he cut her again – sliding the sweet, razor-sharp edge, almost lovingly, across her chest, completely enthralled by his own power, and the effect it was having on her. The shudder of despair and renewed suffering. Her head rolled, half blind, away from him, consumed with misery as she desperately sought an escape – because alarm bells were ringing in her head. Out of the symphony of smells clouding the room – dust, moths, shed skin, human sweat and wood – another note was sounding: a clear, pure, ringing scent, and a familiar one.

Lenore almost broke down, right there and then. After everything she'd tried, and done, they were still here, with _him_. Still here to kill her. Maybe the others were already dead.

She was too far gone to understand their speech, it seemed fluted and warped, as she slid in and out of a state of awake-ness. But smells are stronger, to a vampire, and – as her senses, given respite from the cutting, cleared a little – she noticed the smell of disquiet on the other two humans. Through the fog, she had a ray of hope, and rolled her head to stare at her tormentor – the sudden prospect of revenge painting shades of hatred in her eyes.

He must've seen it in her, because excruciating pain seared across her arm once more – another cut – and Lenore convulsed with it, mouth gaping open as it burnt.

A bigger smell of disquiet now – elevated heartbeats, in front of her, beside her. They were recognizing, in her tormentor, something any vampire could've detected instantly – the sickly-sweet stench of insanity, like decay, evaporating off him in waves. He knew it, too. His smell had changed, from affability to that same cold, cruel blankness he regarded her with – seeing them as things, obstacles to be ruthlessly and pitilessly removed.

One of the hunters, the one she recognized, was speaking. A quiet, reasonable voice – and a calmer heartbeat: trying to race, but being kept in check.

Which _he _didn't like at all. Animosity and hatred, an explosion of it, came off him.

'_If you trust him, he'll turn on you,_' she wanted to snarl. '_He'll turn and strike! He's going to bite you!_'

She tried to – mouth falling open to warn them, but couldn't. Too late, off came the gloves – away went the laughing smile and deep chuckle, out came the open threat. There was a ratchet of cocking gun, tension and nervousness swirling all around her. And then... and then came a smell which over-rode everything, running down the cortex of her spine and flipping all the switches, deep inside. That rich, zinging, unmistakable smell of _Blood_, teeming with life, like pouring honey and chocolate down the throat of a starving man, or sparkling clear water down that of a parched one. That heat, a wonderful warmth, drifted tantalisingly closer, hovering over her.

Real fear flooded Lenore, for the first time in a long time – terrifying, dreadful anticipation.

It was on her face, hitting her – as hard as a slap, a reverberating blow to her head – jerking all that anger and frustration, and self-loathing despair at her own helplessness, to the surface. Her throat, in instinct, gargled and gasped for it. '_Oh God, please don't!_'Rasping, she pulled her pounding head up, as if an invisible string connected her to the _smell. _She could feelsomething black and vicious, stirring inside – and knew, if she reached for it, she'd suddenly have the strength. Enough to hurl this rotting psycho through the walls and climb into the night, and feed and feed, until her stomach, fat and distended, weighed her down. To never go weak and shaky with hunger again. To make this mewling human, with his pathetic prejudices, cower beneath her- '_MAKE THEM PAY!_' it clamored for blood. But...

...but there was that heartbeat again. Frightened and fluttering – but keeping itself down, in hope and faith.

'_This isn't me,' _Lenore thought. '_This is a monster, inside, trying to use me. But it's not me. I have a choice.'_

Acid venom, from _him_, barbed little words trying to hook inside and pull her further along the path. He just wanted an excuse to glorify his _own _monstrousness. 'Still want to save her? _Look _at her,' he was saying. The monster inside hissed and snarled at his voice, while the rest of her cringed with humiliation and hurt. 'They're all the same. Evil. _Bloodthirsty_.'

_'Bloodthirsty like a HUMAN. Well **FUCK **YOU, human!' _a voice that was still Lenore screamed inside her head. Only the evolving survive, I _am _evolving. _I am already different._

'_AND I WON'T BE LIKE YOU! I **WON'T**!'_

A dull ache of cartilage, in her jaw and gums, as she forced her fangs back in, biting jer lips together against the sting. Her body was trying to fight her decision, snorting out breath, shuddering, but she would not give it, or that bastard, the satisfaction.

'No...' Lenore slurred, turning her heavy head from it. 'No...'

'You hear her Gordon?'

'No! _No!'_

'_We're done here_.'

A deeper voice, deep in a gruffer way, shock and relief pounding in this one's pulse, and swallowed pride:

'Sam, get her out of here.'

'Yeah.'

Warmth – suddenly close around her – a waft of maybe soap or shampoo as her head was levered past his hair, and the quiet voice breathing in her ear: 'I got you.'

Hands, sliding behind her back, under her legs – oh, the _pain_! Lenore winced, cried out dryly, but felt herself floating, lifted away from it all, in growing bliss, as he stooped to pick her up. He took a step back, and a warning bark - 'Ah-ah! _Ah-ah!_' - came from the gruff-voice, the leather and musk smell. Her heart almost broke apart in anguish as, for a second, she thought fighting would break out. But she was still floating, still clinging weakly, almost passing out, to her rescuer – being _freed_.

Just as they passed the leather smell, Lenore got another waft of something – wariness, and a tiny undercurrent of anger. '_He wanted to find a monster to kill_,' she thought, watching the jerking scene retreat over Sam's shoulder, in satisfaction (the back of leather-jacket's head, turning to aim his gun, Gordon, unblinking, murderous). '_And he's found one..._'

They slowed as Sam reached the door, she could feel his pulse throbbing in exertion in the veins of his forearms, pressed against the backs of her knees, and her spine – it seemed to follow the same pattern of sound as the door-latch clicked, _beat_, the door hinges squeaked, _beat_, the door groaned shut, _beat_, and on his falling footfalls, _beat_, as he padded down the steps. It tremored, (she felt it in his chest), as the sound of meat, hitting the wall, thudded behind them. His step faltered, and she realized he wanted, instinctively, to go back – but he didn't. She couldn't fully understand the different emotions, coming from him now – duty, resignation, nervousness, worry, anger. And self-reproach, too, lots of it.

He wasn't thinking of the streak of clotted blood, on his forearm, which was (even now) sending bursts of blood-scent to her, like pollen, erupting in puffs from a shaken flower. It was a sign of trust, earned and given, faith in her potential for good. She could almost cry with gratitude.

The world spun (thankfully still painted in shades of blue, as night, studded with stars, spread her wings over them) as he lowered her – to another seat, a padded one – and there was a tortuous groan of metal.

'Hey? Hey,' he said, in a soft voice, being completely gentle with her – and Lenore managed to blink some clarity into her eyes. He was crouched on his haunches, in the dust beside the car – the big, black one – looking up at her kindly.

'Lenore, I need you to tell me where the other vampires are,' he said – once he realized he had her attention – sounding sad and apologetic that he had to ask. 'Can you do that for me?'

Lenore managed to nod, swallowing, so he closed the door and got into the driver's side, teasing at some exposed wires, underneath the wheel, to get it started.

'Why - didn't you - let him kill me?' she burst, and Sam, after a moment, shrugged uncomfortably.

'Because you're an innocent person?' He hazarded, simply. 'Because... it didn't feel right.'

She couldn't understand. She had _hoped_ for understanding, sure – enough for the hunters to let them go – but actual _rescue?_

'But... I... could've bitten you.'

'You didn't.'

'But what if I had?'

At this he paused, thinking for a moment as the engine roared into life, shutting his door.

'_I_ think: there's a difference between being Good, when someone _asks _you to, and being Good, when _no one _does.' He was concentrating on driving as he spoke, was distracted, and Lenore realized she was being humored: replied to because it meant she remained conscious. Empathetic, but pragmatic.

Sam twisted and propped his arm up on the seat, looking over his shoulder as he backed the car out, and almost missed what she whispered next:

'_Thank you_.'

'Hey, I wasn't about to let Gordon-'

'No,' Lenore interrupted. 'Not for that... You called me a "person"...'

Sam gave her an odd look at this – half surprised, half pleased with himself.

'I guess I did... Huh...' He muttered. 'I kinda know how it feels to be considered a freak.'

And, as they bumped down the dusty track, bleached to soot-gray by the moon, Lenore suddenly realized why she'd thought of honey, when the first blood had been spilled. It was exactly what his voice sounded like...

Lenore woke up. She was lying on her bed in the attic of the farm-house, where she and the remnants of her nest slept. Right now, it was completely empty – and she could tell, immediately, that something was wrong. Smoke assailed her nostrils, and she sat up, coughing, to look at the source – an open window. She slipped out of bed, cranking it shut – and jumped in surprise at the scene she saw playing out beyond. It was a tiny window, set into a triangular alcove of the roof, and she had to duck down to make sure what she was seeing was real. Across the farmyard, over a large, lush-green field – hemmed in by sparse stands of autumnal New England trees - stood the cattle-barn, where the other nest slept. It was swarming with people - humans, all of them, she could tell from the way they moved. They seemed to be unloading big black packages from the back of a pick-up truck, at the directions of a tall, powerful-looking African man who stood nearby.

The smoke she was choking was coming from the incinerator, near the barn, where the previous owner – a cattle-farmer – had disposed of dead cows. Of course, he'd never had to burn so many - the horrifying truth crept up on her, and Lenore muffled a sob with her hand – so many_ bodies_, before. Dazed and sickened, Lenore slammed the window closed and staggered to the trap-door which opened onto a steep, claustrophobic little staircase, to the rooms below.

Clambering down it, she made it past the bedrooms – empty, she could smell – to the ground floor, where she found the members of her nest milling round with great disquiet in the dim kitchen, shutters and curtains closed. Standing round the kitchen table, waiting for her, looking for leadership. Eli looked up from gnawing on his nails as the creaking door announced her presence, and got to his feet. She had difficulty looking him in the eye, after her dream. There had been a moment, between waking and smoke, where she had felt utterly content.

'Lenore-'

'What's happening?' she asked, snapping into business as she took the head of the table. 'Who're those people outside?'

Eli glanced uneasily at the other vampires. They looked shocked, numb, seething.

'It's the Doc,' he explained. 'The guy who got me the barkeeping job-'

'What is he doing? Who're the- the bodies?'

'_They're dead,_' one of the others, a vampire named Anna, murmured.

Another: 'They're all dead. _All the others_.'

Lenore sat down, hard, a dullness coming into her eyes.

So they were back here, then, in this place. It was so hard, living like this.

'All of them.' She growled, stating it. 'How?'

They launched into an explanation – all of them – how they'd just come back from the night out (while she slept) in time to see the other nest haring down the road – after some guy on a motorbike. They had stayed away, not knowing if _she _was alive, until it had all calmed down. Rufus had gone off to meet someone, and he wasn't back yet – so the other nest had been leaderless. And then dawn had come, and Doc had showed up with a pickup full of his people... and full of their people... and now he was borrowing the incinerator.

'Why are we _letting him_?' another vampire, a huge bald, tattood one named Donovan, burst out, angrily.

'You don't cross Doc,' Eli said distractedly, shaking his head.

'Why does it always come to this?' Lenore muttered to herself, harrowed. 'If they just hadn't chased- So many...'

'They weren't all killed,' Eli cut in, trying to give her hope. 'One survived.'

'She said she fell off her bike, in the woods.'

'Who?'

'Kate.'

Lenore resisted the urge to grimace. Kate was not a friend of hers. All the vampires from Colorado were too... bloodthirsty... vicious, relishing in what they were, in hurting people. Just the type she'd hoped to avoid involving herself with – but there wasn't anywhere else for them to go, and they needed Doc's protection.

'Where is she?' she asked out loud.

The others shifted, worriedly, examining the floor, their hands, their feet.

'Answer me.'

'Kate...' Eli, chosen spokesman, began, haltingly. 'Kate said she recognized the scent of the hunters. She said... that they'd met before, and, she had to get revenge. They killed her mate.'

That softened Lenore's expression somewhat, but not much.

'_Where is she?_' she repeated, voice hardening.

'We couldn't stop her, Lenore,' Anna whined, pleading. 'She was too angry.'

'She went after them.'

'_Where?' _

No one could tell her, so Lenore got to her feet and left the room in a storm of ire. How dare she? Jeopardizing what little of them were left, for the sake of a vendetta! She was almost out of the farm-house door when Eli's hand closed on her arm.

'Lenore,' he growled. 'You should let her go. Those hunters killer her _mate_, she has every right to seek vengeance.'

'_No_, Eli,' she replied, mournful but firm. 'Revenge is a poison. If we're going to survive, we have to let go of it, all of it. Learning to forgive is better in the long run.'

'Is that it?' Eli rumbled, eyes glinting in defiance. 'Or are you so fond of humans, now, you don't want to see one hurt?'

'Don't be ridiculous.'

She pushed open the door, wincing at the weak wash of sunlight it opened onto her.

'Vampires mate for life, Lenore!' Eli called to her back, as she paused. 'You're a vampire, too – remember?'

Lenore reached for the deep, monk-like hood of her coat – a long, forest-green one, actually better at night-camouflage than black – and raised it over her head.

'I remember.'

The other vampires, watching through cracks in the kitchen-window shutters, were awed to see her striding across the yard, over the road, across the field and right up to the tall African man. They spoke together for a moment – he supremely unthreatened by her presence – and then she took one of the pickups from the farmyard and drove away...


	9. Chapter 8: Love Is A Devil

**Chapter 8: Love Is A Devil**

On a little wooded track, known as Collingwood Road, a fat, youngish cop awoke with a guttural snort, and groaned. He had a _banging_ headache, and his entire world seemed to be engulfed with soft white clouds. Hang on, no, wait, that was the airbag... why was the airbag deployed? He groped his way claustrophobically, inelegantly, into some space, so he could breathe, patting it down in panic, and gazed out over the hood of his squad-car.

'Oooh, no,' he groaned again. 'Oh my God, what the hell happened?'

His hood had buckled and warped – because it seemed to have been rammed into a tree.

Cursing his bad luck, the cop wiggled his way out of the car, and walked round it in a daze, observing the damage. Damn, he was lucky to be alive – the tree was half demolished. There were skid-marks _all__over _the road.

What the _hell_ had happened?

_You pulled an early shift_, a little voice said in his head.

'I pulled an early shift.' He repeated out loud.

_You're not fully awake..._

'I wasn't fully awake.'

Before he could work out _why_ he knew this to be true, the sound of an approaching engine reached his ears, and he swung around, looking for the source. After a few seconds, a pickup – being driven by a dark-haired, picturesque woman in a green coat - flew past, totally ignoring his plight, and waving arms.

'Bitch!' the cop said, with feeling. '_I'm gonna get her plates!'_

But for some reason, when he whipped out his pad, and tried to take it down, he was having trouble remembering it...

Lenore pursed her lips as she powered past, glancing in the rearview as the little fat man did an angry little dance, in her dust. Keeping her attention on the road, she rummaged for her cell, in the side-pocket of the door, and pressed a number on her speed-dial. The Doc was the kind of man you liked knowing you could get in touch with in a hurry. Not that you'd ever want to. God knows he could always get in touch with you, if he wanted to. It was really a matter of necessity. If "people" of a certain ilk needed protection, he gave it. They needed information, he provided it. No mess, no violence (if you were lucky). Just his patronage... and the Little Favors.

The other end up picked up, and a rich, melodious voice filtered into her ear.

'Yes?'

'It's done. The cop's taken care of.'

A chuckle. 'Good.'

'Now, tell me where I need to turn off.'

The engine purred into silence as Kate turned off the key in the ignition, and sat back, wriggling her shoulders into her seat.

It was an overcast day, the sky heavy with a wash of thick gray cloud, hanging depressingly overhead – so the sunlight which seeped through the windshield and onto her waxy-pale complexion did little more than tingle. It was immaterial – though – to The Hatred, thrumming like poison under her skin, a wicked little larvae yearning to escape its flesh-and-blood chrysalis. Flesh and blood, her bread & butter.

Kate watched the motel from across the street, ran the tip of her tongue along her lips (which were chapped, from every time blood had congealed on their surface), as one of the hunters left. Wouldn't it be wonderful if she got to the other one, left a little present for him back in the motel?

She shifted her eyes beyond him, across the motel parking-lot, to where the other was making his way in the opposite direction. He was the one – the one Luthor had tried to take in a headlock, as a bargaining point. For their freedom. Oh, look, he was shuffling along – clearly tired. Poor little human, messy head bowed as he regarded his dragging feet, hand stuck in his jeans pocket.

Kare regarded the passenger seat, where a foot-long, cruelly-serrated knife lay. She picked it up, twisting it in her hand to enjoy the pretty little play of light along its length, and many teeth. Darling little fangs, just like hers. Her gaze slid past it, again, to the young hunter, and the knife-edge reflected in her eyes, like a tongue of flame leaping up, shining with a psychopath's zeal. It was almost making her cry, she was so happy. There was he: an exhausted hunk of meat, just _asking _to be butchered. Kate smiled. Little lost lamb, out for the slaughter.

And all on his own.

Oh, what a crying shame...

Dean rounded the corner, heading down a couple of blocks – where he was sure he'd seen a diner. Any further, and he'd have taken the Impala instead, maybe rolled around town for a while, enjoying the drive. As it was, he felt like he needed fresh air, time to ruminate on how he was going to thaw out the tough bitch he'd left behind. Tricky customer. Obviously not impressed with his razor-sharp intellect and witty come-backs. Maybe he would go for a drive, when he got back. Maybe ask Morgan if she wanted to join him. He could leave Sam alone if he was just sleeping, right? What's the worst that could happen...?

Stupid boy...

There was a slatted, metal, fire-escape like structure on the side of the Rainbow Motel, a balcony and mirroring walkway below, with stairs leading to the single story of rooms above – and it was upon these that Sam had just set foot, as Lenore sped to the scene. A footstep clattered behind him and he twisted, thinking Dean had come back. He hadn't.

Sam gasped as he was sent careering forwards, shins scraping on the metal stairs. He caught himself by the handrail and pivoted, lashed out a foot which connected with a crunch of bone. By all accounts, it should've broken her jaw – but Kate just laughed under her breath, impressed with little lamb's spirit. Enjoying the violence, she grabbed his ankle and pulled – so fast he felt it in his hip. Sam, turned on his back by her movement, with metal biting into his spine, grunted as she pulled him back down, cuts opening up on his neck and skull as they connected with the steps.

He balled up his fist as she did so, braced his other foot on the handrail and suddenly moved it – so the momentum sent his fist powering into her face. She snarled and released him, and Sam skittered up the steps, trying to get back to the room and arm himself. Kate shook her head, and leapt up after him, jumping like a spider – lightning-quick and farther than a human could've been able. She landed with one hands on the rail, the other pressed against the wall, and swung her legs up to jab a heel at his head.

Sam grunted as it connected with the back of his skull, lights flashing in his eyes as he tried to escape. No such luck – a cruel hand latched onto his shoulder, a foot jerked his feet from under him and he was spun on the spot, over balancing.

'Remember me?' Kate breathed happily in his face, lifting him bodily off his feet and throwing him, with both hands, against the concrete wall. She had considered throwing him over the edge, but that was too quick, not hands-on enough. Besides, he was a big boy, he might survive a fall. She didn't want that. Sam cried out at the crack of his shoulder-blades and skull, bouncing in a sharp sear of pain, and then a dull, eye-watering ache. He swayed forwards, feinting, and locked his hands together just time to catch on the cross-guard of the knife she thrust towards him, scraping a tiny cut on his chest.

The blade bit into the webbing of his hand, but he hung on, relying on the strength of his biceps to keep it at bay. Still not stronger than a vampire, though. She jerked one hand away, the pressure on the knife not lessening a bit, and punched his arm so hard it went numb. The blade skittered sideways, away from him, as his strength gave out on one side – but she swung it back. For a second, Sam thought he'd lose his eyes – but she had it hilt-out, and smashed it, instead, into his temple.

Blinded with pain, almost passing out, Sam groaned as she slammed her other palm into his chest – winding him and pushing him back against the wall with the same motion. It didn't end there. She kept her hand there, sharp nails curling in as she pressed them, and herself, carnally up against him, digging into the flesh of his chest. It felt as if she was pulling out his _heart. _With her barbarous grip, Kate slid him further up the wall – his feet left the floor in a roar of agony – until his head connected with the eaves, above.

'Why the sad face, little lamb?' she crooned, smiling up at him. 'You should be_ happy._ I caught you before your brother! You should_ smile. _I bet you have a _lovely _smile. Maybe I should give you one?'

So she did.

She slit his throat, from ear to ear...

Dean skipped a step, over a ridge of paint on the ground, as he came back into the parking-lot. He had forgotten himself, and glanced down gingerly at his hands – which were holding three Styrofoam cups of coffee, pinned together: one for him, one for Sammy, one for... anyone else who wanted one. He made his way carefully through the cars parked, winding in between each in the shortest route he could find, and set a foot on the bottom step of the stairs leading above. His foot slipped, erratically, out from under him, with a loud squeak, and Dean, scowling as he almost tripped, looked down to see...

To see blood, dripping from the metal slats beneath his foot.

It would've been much better for Kate if she'd started, right then...

Kate stood back and let his body fall to the ground, lifting her hands away in distaste. Dead meat was so unappealing. His head scraped on the concrete wall, bumping along like a ragdoll's as he fell, an ungainly sack of bone to her, now. She turned on her heel, to go and climb down the steps and meet the other hunter, but found her way blocked. Dean was standing there, staring, blank-eyed, down at Sam, with boiling coffee spilling in a mess over his hands as he squeezed three cups of it into a pulp between his fingers.

Kate smiled – but her mirth froze when he tore his eyes from Sammy's prone form and looked her in eye. Those eyes were dead, and deadly. And, for the first time, it occurred to Kate that maybe she'd just made the biggest mistake of her afterlife. It was like suddenly realizing the cat you've stepped into a room with is, in fact, a tiger. Oh what a shame. There was a pregnant second of silence where Dean, shaking his head as if to destroy any hope of her escape, took the first step towards her, she the first back. In fear. And then was hounding her down the walkway, with a spring in his heel, as she turned to flee, snatching a hand into her hair, jerking it back and _hurling _her down the staircase headfirst.

Dean propelled himself down after, sliding on one leg down the handrail despite being a whole floor up, and, as he sped down, he jerked out a bowie from his waistband, letting it screech down the metal, in a trail of spitting sparks, letting this bitch know what was coming. Kate staggered to her feet and managed to duck in time as the blade went scything overhead, accompanied by an inarticulate roar of fury, burying itself so deeply in the door-jamb that he couldn't pull it out. It didn't matter. He didn't need knives. Kate raised hers, to gut him, and he just smacked it out of her hands, hurtling it through the air in a brilliant flash of reflected sunlight, like a phoenix taking flight.

He threw her against the wall and punched her in the face – once, twice, three times, never enough – before she ducked out from under his arms and scuttled on all fours into the parked cars, gargling on a nose full of her own blood, scrabbling for the knife...

Lenore arrived on the other side of the road, slamming on the breaks as she saw what was playing out in the parking-lot. Kate was on the floor, in between two cars, as one of the hunters – leather – hands on the roof, slammed his foot into her stomach, over and over, again and again, crouching to pull her head up so he could punch her again. She'd never seen a human so utterly consumed with rage, it was frightening. Why? Her eyes traveled beyond him, up the staircase, to the heap of limbs lying above. Oh no, she was too late. Oh God, it was Sam, it must be Sam, dead. She knew a body when she saw one.

It was then that she spotted the other two hunters – the burst from a room, off to her right, on the inner corner of the motel. The one in the lead – Lenore gasped – was the one the others had described. Blonde hair bouncing out behind his head, long raven hair behind hers, as they sprinted down the walkway. What was strange was that they hurtled straight past Leather, without looking down – the fair-haired man leading the way. They threw themselves up the staircase (the woman seemed disorientated, less sure of her path – she was clearly following his lead) and to their knees, beside Sam's body. They were obscuring him, she couldn't see what they were doing, but she thought she saw them holding their clasped fists together, over his head.

Torn between which to watch, Lenore looked back to Kate – who was laughing in her tormentor's face, spitting her own blood up at him, she seemed to be enjoying herself, despite everything. He lunged at her, where she lay on the floor, and Kate slipped between his legs, kicking upwards so that he staggered over her, catching himself on his hands, and she staggered away behind. He pushed off the ground, span around and kicked inelegantly at her ankles so she flew forwards, crashed into the door of the nearest room.

Jerked out of her horrified spectation by the sudden thrill of knowledge that he was going to kill Kate, Lenore got out of the pickup and started dodging traffic.

She was almost on the parking-lot when she glanced up – at a sizzling, spitting noise - and cried out in pain. Brilliant sparks, each with a tail of white flame, were dancing in a blaze, like fireworks, down the floor of the metal balcony, out from the blonde man and the black-haired woman. So bright, their forms were obscured, like the fleshy darkness inside a foetus – but made of pure, white light. She was struck with the thought: it's... _beautiful... _It blazed in her eyes, and Lenore threw up her hands, unused to the strength of it. Leather could not see – he had Kate inside the room, kicking at her, down on the floor, and just as he returned to the doorway – to retrieve his thrown Bowie – the sparks blinked out, painting Lenore's world in brilliant shades of blue and green as she struggled to get her sight back.

Dean was kicking, and kicking, and throwing every single ounce of strength he had into pounding this fang into a pulp, because nothing he could do would inflict as much pain as he himself was feeling. His head on fire with it, breaths burning like lava in his chest, he couldn't breathe, his legs were begging to give way underneath himself in despair. He wanted to rip off his skin, so it wouldn't constrain his stupid useless muscles, wanted to tear at his hair and scratch out his eyes so he wouldn't have that image burned in them with acid tears. But there was a ferocious joy, too, in inflicting pain upon another being, and feeling physical pain rebound in himself. His knuckles split and bleed and bruise, his lip sting, where he'd bitten down, snarling, his toes crunch inside his boots, his back ache, muscles popping and straining under the impetus of his RAGE. Manual labor of the best kind. He knew he wouldn't stop so long as she could still scream. He didn't want to.

What he wanted was SAM.

Someone was scrabbling at his arms as he threw them back, bringing up the power to punch again, he jerked one back and heard it connect but didn't look up to see who he'd hurt. He was too far gone. The vampire was writhing underneath him, where he had her pinned, laughing up at him in demonic glee, her jaw hanging off one side and little white teeth – shark-sharp, jagged rows of them - peeping at him through her split cheek. The hands were scrabbling at his back, again, gunshots whizzing past his ear in a muted boom – painting red cigarette-burn circles on the vampire's forehead - deafening him. And Dean suddenly felt something hard land in his hands – it was the handle of a machete.

Dean pushed himself off her, skidding sideways on his knees in a plastic burn of carpet friction, and in the same motion raised it far above his head, execution style, gazing down at her with his lips twisting bitterly, eyes completely devoid of mercy, and brought it thrumming down in one endless, effortless arch. One foul swoop. It sliced through flesh & bone, and bit into the carpet, where he let it stay, humming with acoustic shock.

Job done.

Dean stood, gazing down at her, with utter revulsion and hatred painting a glow behind his eyes.

He couldn't breathe, it was hurting, he couldn't think, he'd break down. On some level he could feel his grief and hurt climbing in his chest, battling to overwhelm him, until he thought he'd burst into tears. Whispered wishes for more violence were running in burning blood down the walls of a ribcage too empty of a heart to beat. Clawing at his insides. But he felt... empty. Drained. Devoid. Fighting the urge to scream, frantically groping for some meaning, Dean's temper snapped as that grotesque corpse's skull, still grinning up at him – and he knelt again. Punching, and punching, and punching. Not fair. It didn't last long enough. He needed something to kill.

'Dean, mate, stop, it's dead-' someone was saying. He ignored it, barely heard it. Everything had slowed and muffled, as if life had been switched to slow-motion. Harrowing, like being trapped inside a nightmare, a war-movie - he was in a daze, drowning under the red mist but drinking it in, all the same, because it powered his Anger. All he could trust to was the strength of his punches, fists like hammers, pounding on the gates of hell. The beat throbbing in his ears couldn't have been his pulse. No, it was a war-drum, beating out his hatred so hard he felt it in his gut first, reverberating round him, out from him, beyond him, in a message to everything evil listening, wherever it hid:

_START RUNNING._

But deep inside, a tiny, child's voice, the part which sang at memories of Dad, smiling at him, sobbed:

'_I shouldn't have left him..._'

So when he heard that voice, it felt as if someone had reached a fist down into his stomach and jerked on the strings. He almost wretched in shock.

'Dean...'

Luke was leaning against the wall beside the door, as if he'd been thrown there, staring wide-eyed and breathlessly at him. On the other side was Morgan – considering. Understanding, or recognition, in her eyes, her head cocked to one side like a bird of prey's regarding an equal predator. And standing in between them, haloed in strengthening morning light, like he'd just descended from his cloud, a sudden chill wind teasing at his hair and making it flutter up in curls, like quivering feathers...

was _Sam_...


	10. Chapter 9: Shots In The Dark

**Chapter 9: Shots In The Dark**

'_Sam...?' _his accent thick with emotion, voice strangled and hoarse after yelling so loud.

It couldn't be. This must be a spirit or something, surely – here to haunt him, here to torture him for leaving Sam behind. He didn't think he could cope with the idea of rocksalting it, it was too much, unbearable. Dean gazed at this apparition, like staring at a sunset and knowing it's your last - thinking how beautiful spirits could be, how cruel its presence was. But he didn't care. He could've watched the sun set on this forever, the sheen of tears across his eyes refracting a million stars around Sam's haloed head, and never batted an eyelid. He was holding his breath, didn't want to risk uttering another word in case the merest whisper blew it into thin air, away from him. And, really, what could be possibly say?

So he almost cried out as the apparition moved, taking a step towards, thinking it would destroy Sammy's image. It kept its eyes – squinting a little through its bangs, in anxiety – fixed on him, and stepped forwards... and hit its head on the door frame, with a grunt of surprise. Woah, wait up. Spirits didn't bang their heads on things. It wasn't a spirit. It was Sammy. Dean heard a strangled moan of relief, a shout of laughter, and realized it was his own – he clapped a hand to his mouth, squeezing at his nose in amazement, staring even harder.

'Urgh, you could've warned me, man!' The spirit reproached him. That clinched it. Dean snapped out of his euphoric stupor, and Sam was nearly thrown off his feet as he powered into him. Painfully gripping his shoulders, Dean stared desperately, half deranged with worry, into Sam's face – suddenly fighting down the urge to cackle wildly. Sam winced as he snatched at him, and Dean jerked his hands away in horror. There was a real deep, _nasty_ cut, running right along Sammy's jaw line, from ear to ear. It had clearly drawn blood, but was healing up already, a ropey clot forming. But... but he could've _sworn_ Sam's neck had been flapping, loose, across his own chest. It must've been the folds of his hood, or something, caked in blood.

'Dude, you were _dead!_' Dean croaked accusingly, voice oddly high.

'I'm alright.'

'_You're alright?_'

Sam's eyebrows disappeared into his hair.

'Yeah.'

Dean didn't let go.

'Dude – I'm fine!'

'Maybe we should leave you two alone?' Luke said pointedly, coughing behind his grin.

Dean, brilliant scathing wit, as always, on supply, turned his head and replied:

'Takes one to know one.'

'Sorry, Dean, you might have to repeat that for Sam,' Luke apologised. 'He was _lost in your eyes!!_'

This earnt him a thump on the arm from Morgan ('_Ignore him_') and as they all moved to leave the room, spell broken, Luke spoke again:

'Wow, wow-' He was staring down at Dean's hands, smeared with blood from where he'd disturbed Sam's injury. 'Dude, is that... blood?'

'Yeah,' Dean frowned at his hands, resembling a finger-painting child's, in distaste. 'So?'

Luke made a sickly, gulping noise and lurched across the room, crashing into the bathroom and out of sight. His disappearance was followed by the sound of hacking and retching, and the lovely echo of something squelchy hitting the bottom of a toilet bowl.

'Nice,' Sam murmured, queasily. He was feeling weak and shaken, all over, and not in the mood to hear this.

'Dude!' Dean exclaimed. 'You have _got _to be _kidding_ me.' He addressed Morgan. 'He's afraid of _blood?_'

Morgan, closing her eyes in a manner which suggested she wished the ground would open up and swallow her, nodded.

'Not blood,' she elaborated. 'Human blood. The living freak him out.'

'The living? What about the decapitated?'

Morgan shrugged. 'Freaks and creeps he can deal with. He's just not so hot on biology.'

'_O-hhh_,' a voice echoed tinnily off the tiles, next door. '_That's _not good...'

'Luke, will you hurry up, for fuck's sake?' Morgan called.

At her insistence, he reappeared, twitching his shoulders up high in a shudder, and shook his head.

'Yeuch.'

Ready to exit the crime-scene, Dean craned his head back to look, in wonderment, at Sam again (at which Sam flushed, embarrassed and sort of pleased, avoiding his eyes). Dean barked out a laugh and made a point of ducking his head (at Sammy's expense) under the door-frame, to leave. The four hunters turned to face each other, on the threshold, closing the door on the damning scene inside. Sam by Dean, Luke by Morgan – there was a moment when they all saw each other's positions oddly mirrored – and then the two pairs turned in different directions, and hobbled off to their respective motel-rooms.

Dean made Sam go up the steps first.

'Dude,' he muttered, disgusted, squinting at his feet to make sure he didn't slip up. 'I can't leave you alone for five minutes.'

'Hey,' Sam coughed, over his shoulder, as they reached the top. 'It's not my fault I got attacked.'

'By a chick.' Dean slapped him on the back, jovially but a little too hard.

'You mean a vampire?'

'Whatever,' Dean dismissed him, infuriatingly. 'I should keep you on a friggin' leash.'

'_Ha,'_ Sam thought. 'Y_ou were worried about me..._'

They reached their motel-room. Sam still had the door-key, so Dean took the opportunity, whilst he opened the door (and whilst they were standing closer together than he'd have otherwise managed to get), to scrutinize the back of Sam's head. There was the scabs and blood of more cuts, matting the hair on the back of his head, and the nape of his neck. The soft skin on the side of his right temple had bloated, where a nasty bruise was welling up, and Dean didn't miss the way he was walking gingerly, too – slowly taking shallow little breaths to temper the ache in his ribs. Beat, in more ways than one. Dean shook his head, eyes hardening. Bitch.

Just before Sam got the key worked right, Dean wrinkled his nose, glancing round the walkway. For a second, there, he thought he'd smelled something like- the lock clicked open – nah, never mind.

The Winchester brothers vanished through the cheap wooden door, the room-number painted under the arch of a hokey little rainbow – a badge, stuck onto it – and shut the door behind.

Down in the parking-lot, Lenore slid down the side of the car she was hiding next to and hit the ground. Amazing. She'd seen his limbs suddenly twitch, leap off the floor of the balcony as if electrocuted – which was what the whole ordeal had looked like, actually. Coming back to life. And those two other hunters had clung onto each other, apparently relieved, before helping him to his feet. She'd been close enough to hear their conversation, carrying across the deserted parking-lot:

'Wha- what happened?' from Sam, staring around in shock, rubbing at his neck.

'Nasty cut, mate,' the blond one had assured him. 'Looks worse than it is, I think the bugger knocked you out. For a second there, we thought you weren't going to come round-' (a glance with the black-haired woman) '-didn't we Morg?'

Which was strictly true, Lenore thought.

'Where's Dean?' Sam urged, listening to the sounds of struggle, nearby.

'Downstairs.'

He'd hastened down the stairs, with them – the woman pulling out a big hand gun as she went, a silencer screwed to its barrel, and cocking it with intent. She'd walked into the room, ahead of them, hair drifting back from her shoulders in the wind - like a rocker swaying above his guitar – without the smallest hint of hesitation. Lenore had heard the muted blip of silenced bullets, firing, and known it must be her. Too late for Kate, she knew it, without investigating. The black-haired woman had come out, again, flipped open the trunk of a battered old SUV parked nearby and drawn out a machete, returning with it held by the blade in her fingers.

After an agonized few moments of listening, straining her ears, Lenore had heard the dull thud of a blade biting into carpet.

The four remained inside, speaking together, and then reappeared, heading off in different directions to where she guessed their rooms were. She had peeped her head over the top of the car, to note where the Winchesters' was. One floor up, first door you came to. Just in case.

This was bad. This was really bad. What was she supposed to tell the others, when she got back? That Kate was dead, killed for fighting in the name of a cause they all believed in – the sanctity of one's mate – and that they could do nothing in retaliation? She hopes she could control her nest. They would obey her, she was sure of it, but for how long? This town had done strange things to her clutch of beef-eaters as Eli sometimes called them. It was getting more and more difficult to keep them in check.

Under different circumstances, Lenore thought she'd have gone to the hunters, asked them for mercy. She had a feeling Sam would give it – but if they were there with here these other, new hunters, could she count on them, on him, any more? She knew for a fact that Rufus and his reckless nest had taken humans, people. They had spilled blood, and she had had to literally lock the doors to stop her own nest joining them in the Feed. So, as hunters, they were all within their rights, to (as much as she hated acknowledging it), to slay them. Would they believe her nest wasn't involved, though? The brothers might. But these two new hunters. They were a problem...

Peering cautiously up at the lightening sky, from far beneath, in her green hood, Lenore made a break for it through the maze of parked cars...

Luke was almost collapsing by the time Morgan got him back to the motel-room, dragging his feet, head lolling forwards – she had to hook his arm over her shoulder, muttering encouragements under her breath to keep him going.

'C'mon, you're almost there.'

Kicking the door open, she helped him across the room, through the bathroom door, and even smacked him between the shoulder-blades to help him get it all up. Luke retched miserably, bringing up the last of It. Lucky they'd bought that bull about him being afraid of human blood. If he'd thrown up _this_ in front of them, they'd have had a hard time explaining: because what hit the bottom of the bowl, here, was not vomit. It was black, and insipid, and clung malevolently to the porcelain bowl until Luke poked it with the toilet-brush. It was what's known, in demon hunting circles, as Ectoplasm. As usual, as soon as the foul stuff was out of his system, Luke felt infinitely better. Well enough to gulp down the glass of water Morgan pushed into his hands, to wash away the horrible taste – oddly like avocado, he'd always thought.

Morgan sat on the edge of the bath while he got his strength back, forearms resting on her thighs, and regarded him where he sat, curled up next to the bog. Luke reached a hand up behind his head and flushed it, theatrically, to which she rolled her eyes and stood, pulling him up despite his wingeing groan of objection. Back in the bedroom, she pushed him at the end of her own bed and started walking around, obviously gathering her thoughts and gearing up to give him a bollocking. So he stood, too.

'I'm sorry-' Luke began, trying to head her off before she got going. Morgan could be harder to stop than a train-wreck, sometimes.

'Sorry? _Sorry? _Jesus, Luke!'

'I know.'

'_Jesus!_'

Morgan paced around fruitlessly, hands on her hips, feeling trapped, fishing for something to say and drawing in breath once she landed on it. 'You knew it was going to happen, didn't you? _Didn't you? _How did you know?' she shot at him.

Luke stared into her eyes – angered, on the surface, but helpless & pleading beneath – knowing, as he did so, that the same expression must be mirrored in his own. Part of him felt proud of his sister, for realising that she was being kept in the dark. That's my girl. Part of him warmed to the fact that – yes, here was actually one person, in the whole, wide world, who could tell when he was lying. Who knew where the Luke persona ended and the real him began. But sometimes it felt like being naked in a crowed room, the emperor in his invisible clothes, knowing that somewhere, in the throng, was a pair of eyes which saw you for what you really were. Or would've been, if only she knew...

He wanted _so badly _to come clean, right then, and tell her everything. It was filling him with sorrow, this keeping the truth from her, from his toes to the tips of his hair, blooming in his heart like a black vine, extending its thorned tendrils right through him until everything he did, and said, and thought, was choked by its creeping touch. But he couldn't, he couldn't tell her what he saw, sometimes, when he closed his eyes, because that would mean admitting... admitting that he'd...

'Why won't you _tell _me?' Morgan interrupted, before that traitorous little voice could finish. The closest to a cry Morgan ever came, with anyone, was with him.

'_I can't_,' Luke murmured thickly, in the back of his throat, shaking his head. 'You... you're just going to have to trust me on this one.'

He trailed off, eyes low, in a breath of Welsh, a sighing wish, sending a charm, a benediction, hovering into the air over her head – and knowing it would kill her: 'Dw i'n crefu ar ti...'

_I'm begging you..._

Morgan swallowed. She was a sucker for it. Oh, and this look must've been passed out, in leaflets, amongst little brothers – here came the extraordinarily long jade eyes, gazing into hers, as he tried to read her expression. He had such luminously shining eyes, they were almost like stars, blazing in his face. Chin jutting, delicately-fair brows arching at the unfairness of it all, it was the quickest way to drain her of what little resolve she had. Bastard.

Morgan raised her hands – as if to strangle him – but merely tightened them into fists, instead, on the loose collar of his hoodie, resting on his chest. She nodded, eventually, and let Luke go - and as she did so, the necklace he wore shifted back into place, as if it wanted to be seen. Morgan cast a wary eye over it.

Luke dropped his head, too, blonde hair falling forwards in those slightly-effeminate waves (he tucked a strand behind his ear) and looked at it with her.

'I've already used it, in front of them,' he muttered, realising that she was too exhausted now to decry his confession.

Morgan groaned. '_Luke...!_'

'I had to, Morg. This cop was about to shoot us-'

'I don't care!' She almost laughed, listening to herself, but bit back the inappropriate mirth.

'Did they ask about it?' Morgan continued, before he could say something else to make her laugh.

'Yeah, but I fobbed 'em off.'

'And how long is that going to last?'

'I dunno...'

'You saw!' She stated, 'you saw what Dean did to that vampire. If he had any _idea_ what we've done-'

'Oh, come on Morg. _Vampires? _It's a bit different-'

'No, it's not! Not to some people! We could be in serious danger, here, Lu.'

Ah. That was the crutch of their situation, alright. He'd landed her right in jeopardy, without meaning to, and it was all his fault. Luke swallowed guiltily, regretful that he'd had to put her through it.

'Yeah, but...' he added, floundering for a positive. 'But... Sam's alive, right? That's good, isn't it?'

Morgan's eyes flicked up to stare at her little brother. She was always caught off guard by... by his sudden ability to see the upside in everything. He was so simple, sometimes. He made complications seem like an adult delusion.

'Aye,' Morgan replied quietly. 'Aye, you're right, it is. There aren't enough decent hunters around...'

Luke puckered his mouth, swinging, fidgeting, from side to side. 'It's a good thing.'

'If they don't find _out_, yes.'

Luke could feel her thawing out a little, and grinned sheepishly through his hair.

'Oh, you never know... they might be grateful?'

Morgan sighed, shaking her head. 'I don't think so, Luke. _You _they might thank – but me? No way. _No way_. Remember that nutter in Louisiana?'

Luke's eyebrows shot up.

'Yeah, but I think he was a few folding chairs, a hamper, a jam jar, and _an ant-colony _short of a picnic-'

'I know.' Morgan licked her lips, trying to make him see the unpleasant truths, here. 'I know. Sam and Dean, they seem like nice blokes, sure – and I don't regret doin' that, exactly, if it means some young guy doesn't end up as a stain on the pavement. But I think our best bet, here, is to just... leave. Now. Say our goodbyes, and leg it.'

'No!' Luke shot, instantly, panicked. 'We can't!'

'Why not?'

He opened his mouth to speak, and couldn't. '_Because I see visions of the future, Morgy. Because I think Dean's going to die, and I have to work out how to stop it...'_ He didn't say. Reading his conflict in his anguished face, Morgan sighed again.

'Alright, fine.' She conceded, hands up in the air. One of her hands was sliced, across the webbing between her thumb and forefinger, where Luke had cut her. His own palm had her blood on it, too, where they'd squeezed their fists together, white-knuckle time. The way Morgan kept her voice in check, tightly controlling the tell-tale quaver which wouldn't shown how wounded she was at his concealment? It wasn't lost on Luke...

'So what d'we do now?' he said, chirpy but subservient.

'Well, if we've got to stay,' Morgan sighed. 'I suppose we may as well-' she grimaced crookedly, not quite believing what she was about to say.

'What?' Luke's eyes were round with curiosity.

'...make friends?'

Luke straightened in relief. 'Oh! Okay, well, that's easy enough for me... what're you going to do?'

'Oi!' Morgan cried, smacking him on the arm. 'I can be friendly!' She thought about it. 'With help.'

'O-hh! Right, okay. I think I've got a pack in my wallet-'

'Luke...'

'What?' he was licking his lips, almost-but-not-quite keeping a straight face.

'That's not the kind of help I meant.'

'My God - you're going to slip Dean viagra?!'

Morgan half-yelped 'What?! _No! _I'm going to... bribe him.'

'Ah.' Luke nodded sagely. 'Is that what the cool kids're calling it these days?'

'Ow... Ow... Ow... _OW!_'

'Ahh, _suck _it up, ya wuss!' Dean snapped with a sing-song cadence, breaking off the suture.

'If you'd just let me- dude!' Sam cried out again as Dean slapped away the hands he was trying to reach up to his own neck.

Following the theme of the motel, their room was painted entirely in one color: red. Red 3D-effect wallpaper, red shaggy rug, dark-stained wood, red lava lamps, appropriately hideous paintings of local New England fall on the walls. Red mottled glass in the oblong shapes cut into their sceen. Even red fairy-lights, ranged around their headboards (padded, plush, red). Dean had picked it – in the hope, Sam suspected, of being mistaken for a brothel.

He was wearing his greyhound t-shirt now, sitting on one of the table's chairs, Dean in the other, drawn up close enough that their knees were locked together. So he could practice stitching on baby bro's face. Lucky him. The cut was only really deep below his right side-burn, where she'd pressed the knife-tip in (Dean had been twisting his head around, uncomfortably). He'd probably have a nasty scar for a while.

'Now quit whining and take this,' Dean (the mother hen) ordered, pushing a bag of ice at him.

Sam took it off his chest, where Dean had thrust it (tutting at the wet patch), and pressed it tenderly to the back of his skull, trying not to wince as it spread cool dampness across the egg-sized bumps and cuts there. Meanwhile, Dean took his left wrist, stretching his arm out, unceremoniously, across the table (Sam's eyes flickered in annoyance at the jerk of his shoulder blade) so he could bandage up a cut Sam had, there. There the metal hand-rail had bitten him when she'd pulled him down.

Eventually, job done, Dean threw all of the stuff back haphazardly into their jumbo first-aid box (before Sam could protest that he wasn't putting things back where they belonged), pushed his chair back and stood, stretching exuberantly.

'What about your cuts?' Sam asked simply, accent thickening because he was tired, pointing at the now-totally-disorganized first aid kit.

Dean shrugged, full of machismo.

'Pff, I'll do it later. Or maybe I'll get someone else to do it for me... I wonder if Morgan has a nurse's outfit...'

Sam rolled his eyes as Dean skipped off into fairyland. 'I need to lie down.' He croaked, swinging his long limbs arthritically off the chair towards his bed (the one closest to the table, but furthest from the door).

'You're just too fragile.' Dean chuckled at his back, as Sam levered himself onto the covers, engulfing the bed in a welcoming bear-hug:

'Bite me.'

Grinning, Dean had just retaken his seat – boots propped up on Sam's vacated spot – and whipped out a newspaper from the pile on the table (to see whether there was anything new on their case) when there was a knock at the door.

'You gonna get that?'

'Urgh,' Sam mumbled into his pillow.

Eyebrows raised, unsurprised, Dean wound his way past the foot of the beds – sparing Sam's big feet a slap of his hand – and opened the door. Morgan was sitting on the handrail opposite him, wearing the black leather-jacket he recognized from the night they'd met. He seized the chance to check out the scenery before she noticed him. Puffing on that cigarette in a way which made him suck in his breath, appreciatively, through his teeth. Her magnificent head turned into the cold wind. She realised he'd answered the door at the scrape of his hand – Dean had lifted it to rest on the lintel as he took in the view.

'Hey,' Dean said, nodding his head upwards, pleasantly surprised, and shooting her a smile – little more than a lick of shadow under one cheekbone. Back in Zippo mode.

'I see you're lighting your own cigarettes now,' he remarked.

Morgan chuckled huskily under her breath, raising a brow at it as she tapped off the ash.

'Yeah,' she replied, 'it's this new-' she swallowed down bracingly '-spirit of Female Independence. Luke's trying to beat it out of me.'

Dean noticed, as she said this, that she was nursing a broken bottom lip, and frowned.

'Did I give you that?' he asked, motioning at it. He remembered hitting someone.

Morgan licked her lip, trying it out. 'You did.'

_Damnit! _He whined in his head. How to loose a chick in ten seconds!

Although, actually:

'Got a minute?' Morgan prompted.

_Huh..._

'I- uh... Sam-'

Dean glanced over his shoulder, into the room behind him, where Sam- where Sam was lying, fast asleep, dead to the world (but not to him, thank God), one arm trailing along the floor, over the edge of the bed. The light, streaming from the open door, brought a bar of white floating into life over him – or pink, 'cause the covers were tinting it red. Illuminating the one half of his face (mole by his nose, nostril flaring as he breathed deep) which was still visible above the pillows. Eye shut, dark lashes quivering under the messy wisps of hair which half obscured them. Dean rolled his eyes. Typical.

'Sure,' he repeated. 'Just- give me a sec.'

An idea had occurred to him – he was in an odd, giddy mood.

Dean turned back into the room, and padded stealthily across the carpet (which gave way under his boots) to the table.

Amidst the tangle of newspapers, maps (one with a neat little Venn-diagram of attacks – which Sammy had rigged, to figure out where the nest was) and, now, medical stuff, was a large bowl of red wax fruit. (One apple had a set of teeth-marks indented in its smooth surface, where he'd accidentally bitten into it, the day before). Dean upended the bowl onto the table, holding his other hand underneath so the falling fruit wouldn't make a noise, and shooting glances at Sam's sleeping back. Nadda.

He sneaked into the bathroom, filled the bowl half to the brim with water, and returned, kneeling reverentially by Sam's side, like a priest going to prayer, and eased it gently under his fingers.

Yahtzee.

Beaming with himself, Dean strolled towards the beckoning fresh air, pausing in the doorway, pleased, to admire his handiwork and closed the door behind himself. As the door swung shut, the bar of light narrowed to a splinter – and, had anyone been around to see it, they might have noticed (from what little was visible of his face), that a tiny smile curled itself around the edge of Sam's "sleeping" mouth...

Outside, Dean faced Morgan.

'What can I do for ya?' he started, filling in an x-rated answer in his head.

'You can give me the pleasure,' Morgan replied, 'of your company.'

_Damnit! So close..._

'Luke being an ass, huh?'

'Oh yeah. I wanted to talk to someone who isn't a complete cretin.'

'Really?'

He pretended to know what that meant.

'Really really.' Morgan repeated. 'So, d'you know anyone?'

Dean huffed a breath of laughter, shaking his head. He walked forwards to put his hands on the rail beside her (she got off and emulated him, leaning forwards on her elbows) and they both gazed out over the parking-lot.

'You-' Dean began, and then rewound before he gushed at her, like Sammy would've. 'You are not good with people.'

'Piss off!' Morgan snorted, with irony. 'I've got loads of friends.'

'Like who?'

'Well, you met my girls, earlier.' She said, stiffly.

Resisting the urge to make a crack about her boobs, Dean twisted his neck to look at her – happy that the distance he had to look was much less than usual, because she was so tall. Must've been only a couple of inches shorter than _him._

'Your girls?'

'Aye.'

Morgan swung herself away from the rail, cigarette propped in her mouth, cocking a leg as she between them with one hand, behind herself with the other. From behind her back (beneath her jacket) she drew out the gun she'd had trained on him earlier – the now un-silenced Magnum – and, from (what he realized was a strap on) her leg, a little Beretta.

'My girls,' Morgan explained. 'Maggie,' she indicated the Magnum, 'and Betty.' the Beretta

He liked the way she just whipped them out in broad daylight. Not that she wasn't cautious, but that she just didn't give a fuck. Dean couldn't pin down what was making a smile twitch around the corner of his mouth, until: Oh yeah – he was impressed.

'You named your guns?' He asked, not quite believing it.

'Yeah,' Morgan said, as if this was the most natural thing in the world, and tucked them away. 'Don't you have anything _you're _attached to?'

Dean smirked.

'As a matter of fact I do. Maybe I'll introduce you two later on.'

They both skimmed over that one, into a relaxed silence, staring out over the parking lot as the sun rose higher in the east, over to their right. Early morning for everyone else, all in a night's work for hunters. Cars started to whizz up and down the road, kids going to school, students in what Luke called Serious Knit-wear. Dean spotted someone in doctor's scrubs padding along the opposite sidewalk with a cup of coffee in her hand.

'Oh, that reminds me,' Morgan burst, having noticed the very same thing. She twisted round (Dean watched where to) and picked up, from the floor beside his doorway, a pair of Styrofoam-capped cups.

'Liquid breakfast,' she said, handing him one. 'I don't know how you take it, but I got my usual - two shots of espresso in black?'

'Nice,' Dean breathed, eyes lighting up. 'Whaddya call that?'

She smiled crookedly. 'A shot in the dark.'

Dean took an experimental slurp. 'I like it.'

They lapsed into silence again, sipping their coffee, using the white-steaming cups to warm their hands, against the chill. They were standing shoulder to shoulder, and it felt... oddly... simple.

'Hey Morgan?' Dean said.

'Hey Dean?'

'Sorry I hit you.'

Morgan looked surprised at the apology (he saw out of the corner of his eyes).

'D'worry about it,' she reassured him. 'You can't punch.'

Gee. She didn't skimp on the compliments, did she?


	11. Chapter 10: Mr Wolf

**Chapter 10: Mr Wolf**

After a while – as their coffee ran low, her cigarette burning down, and as the blinding sun grew bright enough to warm that which wasn't in shadow – Dean realized Morgan was keeping something back. He turned to see her watching him, with her clever face propped up on one elbow, black feline eyes sparkling at him in amusement. Funny how a pouting mouth, without in any way changing its shape, could somehow seem permanently on the point of smiling.

'What?'

'Are you forgetting something?'

Dean's eyes slid away from her, blankly searching the middle-distance for a clue.

'You lost me.'

Morgan pushed herself upright and nodded across the parking-lot, where a pickup full of men was just pulling into view. It trundled slowly towards them, and Morgan dug a hand into her jeans pocket, drawing out what looked like car-keys. With a flick of the wrist, she sent them sailing over the balustrade – Dean blinked in surprise – to where Luke snatched them out of the air with a little-boy grin. He caught them oddly, Dean thought – swinging his torso round so that his hands were in a cup, moving away to compensate for the momentum – he didn't know it, but it was a move Luke had learnt from playing cricket, as a kid.

As they watched, Luke hopped into the Bronco and backed it out (they could just see the tips of his blond hair, swinging around like a spaniel's ears, under the roof, as he reversed), so the pickup could move into his space, hugging the curb. The men inside got out – they were all mean-looking, heavy set, possessed of faces like old boxers who've taken one too many. So it was slightly comical that they all wore long, black-rubber gloves and aprons. A couple of them had butcher's knives in tow. They got out of the pickup, drawing with them empty trash bags, a plastic sheet, and a see-through box full of what looked like cleaning equipment.

'Alright, you got me,' Dean eventually gave in. 'What the hell's happening?'

Morgan chortled darkly.

'Before I came up here, I told Luke to call the Doc on your behalf.'

'The Doc?' Dean started. 'That sounds-'

'Vaguely ominous...?' Morgan suggested (missing the pleasantly-surprised look on his face as she used that particular turn of phrase) twitched her eyebrows, half in agreement. 'Yeah. He's not so bad. A handy friend to have, you could say.'

'Okay. So, who's The Doc, and why is he here?'

'He isn't. These're just some of his lackies,' (she nodded at them, watching them disappear below) 'here to clean up your mess.'

The penny dropped. 'Dude, the body!'

Crap! He'd clean forgot about it, with... everything else going on. Patching up Sammy, breaking out the java. Damnit! Dean was about to leave in a hurry when Morgan stopped him with a hand on his arm.

'Relax. It's taken care of.'

Dean was surprised at this, and slowed, twisting round on the spot. 'What, the vampire?'

'Yup.'

He suddenly remembered that Luke had made a call, back at the crash site. Said he had a way to take care of everything, even the Obi-Waned cop.

'Hold up. You're telling me they're just gonna... get rid of the body-'

'Dismember it, cart it off, clean the room, destroy any evidence, and vanish? Yup. That's the way it goes.'

Dean was staggered. 'Who the hell _is _this guy?'

'The Doc?' Morgan raised her eyebrows, as if stumped for an answer herself. 'He's... someone you don't want to make an enemy of, that's for sure. But he's a push-over, really.'

Dean observed the group of men, now lugging suspiciously-laden trash-bags to the back of their pickup. The mind boggled at it.

'He's our go-to guy,' Morgan was continuing. 'You find yourself in a fix, the Doc's the guy.'

Dean threw back his head and cackled as he retook his place on her right.

'So he's like your Mr Wolf?'

'Exactly,' Morgan beamed, recognising the reference to Pulp Fiction. 'He make it business to get us the fuck outta Dodge.'

'Ha!'

'Oh shit!' Morgan exclaimed, a hand flying to her mouth. 'Bugger, I shouldn't have told you his real name. Lo's weird about people knowing it.'

'Why?' Dean asked, fascinated, and swayed conspiratorially closer. 'What is it?'

'Olufunmilola Zinsou.' Morgan rattled off, turning back to see his reaction.

Dean raised his eyebrows, to indulge her.

'...Yikes. Did his parents not like him?'

Morgan laughed. 'It's not that bad. He lets his friends call him "Milo" for short, and Luke and me "Lo", for even shorter.'

Something strange in the way she said "me" made Dean cast an eye over her profile as she carried on watching the show. Hmm. History there.

'So why's he do it, why's he help you? Why's he help _me?_' Dean asked, unable to bend his head around the thought of a go-to guy who came-to on such a grand scale. It made him wish he and Sammy had one of their own, a sort of Bobby On Steroids – it would've made St. Louis and all that crap so much easier. It made him feel kinda stupid, though, too – that these two hunters had such sweet stuff rigged in a country they'd only just entered.

'What's in it for him?

'Well,' Morgan cleared her throat. 'Usually, Lo does attach a price, you're right. He'll call you, maybe in the middle of the night, and ask you to do him a Favour. Might be checking up on someone he's having watched. Might be-' she barked a laugh '-carting dead vampires out of motel rooms. You never know. But you never refuse, in case the favour you turn down is the same one you need, later on. We've known him for years, Luke and me. Since we were kids. But we've never been on his turf before, so –' she shrugged '-we've built up credit, and now he helps us out, on the house, 'cause he's an old mate of my dad's.'

By the time she'd finished speaking, the men had finished their messy job, were clambering ungraciously into the pickup – throwing bags in the back – and reversing out of their borrowed space in a squeal of loose bandsaw. Dean laughed. 'Huh.' It was so simple, so easy.

'Dude, I gotta meet the guy,' he said out loud, pointing to emphasize it. 'Thank him.'

'You will.'

'You'll arrange that?'

'Didn't I mention? We're going out tonight.' Back was that little not-a-smile round her mouth. 'Luke and me. Chances are we'll bump into Lo – if you want to join us. We never did have that drink, did we?'

She wasn't looking at him, so Dean couldn't tell how nervous she was, just suggesting such a thing.

Not only because of the kind of crap she'd left back in her motel-room, with Luke, but because... well, to be frank, because Dean was right – she wasn't good with people. She knew she wasn't. She was awkward, and abrupt, and too honest and cutting for her own good (she'd been told). Basically, the complete opposite of Luke, who could tease people and still be adored, who could make statues break down and tell him what they really thought of pigeons. Boy could've sweet-talk his way into the pentagon. Not her. She was bad with words, like dad, and much preferred a thrown punch to a thrown insult. Plus, it had been more than a year – what with everything that had happened - since she'd found herself in such a situation, or, indeed, gone _anywhere near, _another man. She didn't even know if she could, any more.

Fuck it, hadn't she sworn...?

Funny how promises you make yourself get thrown out the window for a single day of peace.

Because... this guy was good-looking. _Sod that_, actually – he was gorgeous ('_my equal_,' a little voice, feminine enough to be vain, added in her head). It had only just really dawned on her, spending this time standing in silence with him. You suddenly became aware of another body, nearby, when it was this attractive – stopped trusting your own not to react. She didn't doubt she could hold her own, physically – now that? That had never been a problem - but there was _another _problem. She had to make friends, she knew. She had to forge a connection, here – for her and Luke's sake. But she'd never been able to do that superficially, to make someone else care about her without caring back.

Didn't have it in her. To do that was... was to work a con too despicable for her to contemplate. Whatever happened, here, she was going to get burned. '_Ain't that just the way?_' So Morgan did what she always did: she sighed, gritted her teeth and bared it. Bolstered her heavy heart, with those iron struts she'd taken so many years to erect, and stared into a horizon which had no memory, no agenda.

Unaware of the ruckus breaking out in her head, Dean smiled. Sammy was alive, if not well, and about to be pranked. He had good hot coffee in him, a warm bed waiting. The sun was up, and hours of nasty labor had just been neatly removed the equation of his immediate future. Things were looking up.

Morgan was leaning on her forearms, still watching the world go by, oblivious to the happiness she'd generated. Coming out of her reverie, she rubbed herself on her folded arms as she noticed the cold seeping through her jacket and straightened up. She dropped her cigarette – now a long quivering line of black ash – and stubbed it out under the toe of her combats.

'You know what?' she started, philosophically, nodding at the busy street, and the city coming to life, all around them (Dean's mouth puckered, nonplussed, as he waited for her to finish). 'It never ceases to amaze me.'

'What?'

She turned to look at him. 'Normal life.'

Morgan shot a lopsided smile his way – there and gone again, quick as lightning – and with that she was gone, striding her long curvy frame down the walkway, bouncing down the steps, and back to her own room. Dean leaned over the railing, on his elbow, so he could watch her go.

Oh, and that was another thing: _the scenery was definitely growing on him..._

As Morgan and Dean retreated to their motel rooms, both crashing after a long sleepless night and early morning caught up in the usual chaos of working a tricky job, to finally catch forty winks, someone else's day was just beginning. Miles away, in the south end of the aptly-named Pleasant Street, full of luxurious penthouses and mansions backing onto a beautiful oasis of green known as Elm Park, a brisk wind sprang up.

It whistled alarmingly round the paws of a gigantic black dog, as it padded across the grass, towards one huge, unusual-looking, semi-detached building. It was three stories high, and imposing, made principally of smart red brick, but instead of the standard pitched roof you'd expect, this one had an arched one, a half-cylinder on top, glazed entirely with skylights, and a spoke-wheeled flat window at the exposed end – all of which glittered in the morning sun. The rest of the building, on the park-side, looked like a faithful extension - added rooms, two stories of them, with curved bay windows echoing the roof.

The dog stopped, right before the grand ground-floor doorway which stood like a disdainfully-gasping mouth between two bay-window eyes, and bowed its head to sniff. There was a strip of something resembling fly-paper hidden, expertly, upon its threshold, tucked right in close to the draft-excluding. It was covered in a powder, so regular and fine it was almost like soot, and covered the doorway exactly. Had the dog investigated, it would've found similar strips along every single window in that place - even the ones in the ceiling. A definite problem.

The dog craned its neck back to regard the other half of the building, with unholy sentience to the way its thought processes flickered across a pair of gently glowing red eyes. Were it possible for dogs to grin, the way this one suddenly bared its gleaming fangs and wagged its tail should have had animal lovers everywhere running for cover.

My my, what large teeth it had.

The people next door, unfortunately for them, were not so well-versed in Hoodoo...

Inside, the Doc himself sat back, exhausted, from the phone – his last call finished – and ran a finger across his lip, in thought.

There was something leonine about Olufunmilola Zinsou, leonine and regal. Maybe it was the excellent poise, or the air of absolute confidence. He was a handsome African man – tall, lean, but powerfully built, big shoulders – with dimples in his proud, high cheeks, full lips like plums, and long, pretty eyes, shining with intelligence. A sadness, there, too – twin brands of the hard life he had spent. His head, as he lay it to rest in the plush headpiece of his chair, was completely bald, pate reflecting the light which flooded his apartment – compensated for the tiny hint of a beard-tuft on his chin, a fine continuation of a good jawline.

A benevolent face, despite his necessary reputation, although right now it was frowning.

He was thinking, after hanging up on Luke, of the first time he had ever encounted an _Enfield_...

_Clichy-sous-Bois, Paris, 1987_

He was young, and bone-skinny, barely out of Benin, barely surviving. They had only been in France a few months, now, long enough for him to have learnt the true meaning of the word "trafficked" - sold off like luggage to the highest bidder, both of them. He was just grateful that there wasn't much taste for young boys in all the places they had initially been thrown. Grateful that Enitan, even though barely eighteen, towered high enough over others that he had managed to fight their way free of it all, before...

Yes, they were on the streets, still, but they were working for their money – if illegally – and Enitan nurtured dreams of getting out of it, once he'd got enough money.

The horrifying truth of what their parents had done, even if out of ignorance, had long ago numbed from a heart-wrenching sting, to a dull ache. Thirteen years old and already hardened to the fact that he was never going back, that he'd never see them again – for all that Enitan assured him otherwise. Hard to keep that kind of despair down, at moments like this. They had been walking for miles and miles, trudging wearily through the bizarrely-placed woodland which was strewn amongst the banlieue, the rough suburbs of Paris. His elder brother retained a state of absolute seething, resentful silence throughout – had been doing so for hours.

Not aimed at _him_, but at the so-called "friend" who had let them down, promised them a place to stay in the service logement, council accommodation, and then backed out at the last minute once he'd found out Enitan was dealing – to keep them afloat. Apparently the local pushers weren't to be tangled with, so they were trying to stay off the streets, as night came on. Of course, they'd spent their last penny to get the taxi out here, only to find that no bus-services ran after eleven Where were they going to sleep? When would they next have food? What would happen if they got in trouble? All the usual question, unanswerable but persistently throbbing, in time with his headache and the stitch raking its claws in his side.

One of them, at least, was soon answered. Stumbling out from the woodland, they found themselves on a busy road opposite a block of ramshackle, run down old flats. They were covered with cheap panels, half of them curling up and rotted, as if a strong puff of wind would cause them to shed like scales and scathe the surrounding wood of its branches. Night was already well under way, everything seemed disorientatingly dark until you looked up at the sky, and saw that the sun was still trying, valiantly, to paint it blue.

The two clambered across the empty car-park (deserted but for the black-caked shell of burnt-out car, which might've been a Fiat, opposite them) and sought shelter in the exposed foot-well of the flats. It didn't matter that they stank of urine and cigarette smoke, the two brothers were exhausted. Enitan was pale, sweaty and shaking, even more so than him, so 'Lo helped him up the shallow steps, clinging onto the scabbed, rusty handrail with his free hand. He levered him into the corner, against one cold, impersonal concrete pillar, and squeezed in beside him, for the night...

Lo remembered, when he had awoken later on, that he hadn't known why. Merely a feeling. Of course, he hadn't understood (at the time), that such Feelings weren't present in everyone, and he'd coached himself into power and control, since then. He remembered peering round (Enitan snoring gently beside him), eyes gaping wide open in the gloom as he struggled to see, and wondering why his heart was beating so fast, why the air in front of his face was a mist of breath even though it was summer. He'd thought the pushers, or the police, perhaps, must be near... and then he had heard the laughter.

It took him a moment to narrow it down as such, but that's what it was. A crackling, gurgling, malevolent little sound, guttural and cruel, like an invisible hand creeping its jagged fingers up his spine, a _gnuh-gnuh_ of something crooning with wicked glee. It was echoing down the stairwell, unnervingly near. Where the hell was it? It could be right behind him, if it wasn't for the pillar. He could've been inches away from it, and never known, it was so dark. Stamping on that terrifying thought, he had cowered back against Enitan's shoulder – damn him, he was still outcold.

Then his eyes had had to adjust – to an odd, dull, flickering light. Like an old black & white TV left on in a deserted, darkened room. It was filtering down from the one of the flats, above, casting its little puppet-show on the flat surface of tarmac which was the car-park. Lo remembered looking on, enthralled and frozen stiff with fright, as the silhouette of something..._ deformed_, wrong, darted across the square of grainy luminescence. For a second, it was almost as if a pool of white water lay only feet from him, and a shark had darted past inside its depths.

This was ridiculous. Enitan was asleep, and he'd been suffering all day. It was up to _him _to be the brave one. Steeling himself, Lo had eased forwards, pushing himself off the pillar, breath really freezing now, his hands and feet and nose were numb, bruises aching on his back from sleeping against the concrete wall. He had crept - one step, two – to the edge of the stairwell, trying not to make a sound, and craned his neck around to find the source.

'_NwaRGH!'_ That was the closest he could describe the sound, like a snarl of snapping cartilage as- He gasped- a woman's head came powering through a window, far above, sending a spray of glass down on top of him. Her mouth hung open, and her eyes were wide, in horror - blank and staring, full of tears – but suddenly that horrible snapping sound came again, and her head cricked around 180 degrees... and there was a face on the back of her head. Its eyes were gashes, shining like black, burning coals in her skull, singeing her hair, a huge mouth, rimmed with razor-sharp teeth, grinned at him, a tongue like a salted slug lolling out between them, gloating. It opened its disgusting, snouty nostrils – two vertical slits between its insane, bulging eyes, leaking blood like snot – and it... sniffed him out.

And that was the first Possession Lo ever saw.

The thing had _leapt _out with a cackle of mirth when he screamed, showering even more glass, skuttling down the wall, somehow – the woman's legs and arms had been cracked and twisted backwards at all the joints, like a crab or a broken puppet being made to dance, despite the way its limbs jerked on its strings. Lo had cringed onto the floor, covering his head, and waited to be devoured. But, instead-

**BOOM!**

Booted feet had landed, as if the earth was quaking, either side of him, and he had looked up to find himself lost in the cloak of a long back coat, whirling round as the _bear_ of a man inside it had swung the weapon in his arms up – it was a crossbow! Shining with silver!- utterly at his ease, and, as it launched itself lividly through the hair: had hit the thing _smack _between the eyes. It screeched, scrabbling at the arrow now pinning its head to the wall. Not dead, not yet. Unholy abomination. With all its weight hanging from the arrow in its head, it had swung its abdomen up - like a spider tending its own silk – to scratch and wrench at it with feet and knees and snapping fingers.

The bear man had stepped off him, he remembered – revealing the path where a grappling hook had carved its journey into the wall – the gun for it in his other hand. He must've been up there, with it, and thrown himself out, too. Amazing. He had whirled around, and spoken in one of those voices so deep it registers in the rib-cage before the ears – and Lo, cowering on his hands and knees, had ducked down to see between his feet: where a blonde boy, perhaps a couple of years younger than he, was standing, in a state of absolute calm. Arms folded, looking vaguely bored, in the middle of the car-park. He had astoundingly blue eyes.

'Bring that here,' the bear-man had ordered – in a language he had not understood, back then.

The boy had jumped to it, wrenching at the handle of a plastic bucket which he had been concealing behind his feet, by the way he leaned it was full to the very brim. The boy had dumped it at bear-man's feet, sparing Lo a cursory glance, and stood back to watch again. The thing broke away from the arrow the only way it could, by ripping it up, splitting its hosts head in two (Lo had hidden his face, gulping in horror and revulsion).

Bear-man had caught it, one-handed, by the throat as it fell, regarding it blankly as it snickered and spat and tried to claw out his eyes. Without any qualms, he had lowered his hand, and dunked its head right into the bucket. He held it there.

Lo had shrieked – all this was going on inches away from him – and leapt back to Enitan, now awake and staring in utter astonishment as they clung to each other. They looked on in petrified, morbid fascination as bear-man drowned the thing – in what they mistook for a bucket of acid. It was, he had later discovered, Holy Water – but they weren't to know that at the time. At the time, they had wondered who on _Earth_ this man was, that he could dunk his arms up to the elbow in a liquid which was hissing and steaming as the thing's head dissolved. Without so much as _flinching_. He was even chanting out _Latin _in a constant stream under his breath.

It had taken a matter of minutes, as the thing's struggles gradually grew weaker and weaker – and when bear-man let go, all that fell from the now-emptied bucket was a bloodied stump. The bucket overturned, as he let it go, and rolled towards he and Enitan. When it hit his shaking foot, Lo remembered one of those odd little details – that the handle had melted.

Bear man got off his knees, and Lo had a chance to see what he looked like, properly.

He was big – maybe 6' 3", 6' 4" - with huge broad shoulders, obviously layered with hard muscle, he could see even through he coat. Late twenties, early thirties. Bear-man was... he hesitated to call him Caucasian. He was white, but naturally dark, maybe had Italian or Hispanic blood in him, somewhere. His face was broad and blocky, features carved out in grim, uncompromising lines – like his strong, angular nose, looking like it must've been broken at least once. A square jaw, stubble, thick neck. Long, thick, luxuriant black hair – shoulder length – less like he'd grown it for vanity, more like a wild caveman had stepped through time. He had that kind of exceptionally strong brow-line, too, so pronounced it almost obscured his eyes – round, unusually wide-set - completely in shadow, making the whites of them _leap_ out like a cat in the night.

That's what made his stare so formidable – as he regarded Lo through tangles of black hair, thrown over his face by his exorcise: you could see the whites of his eyes, underneath his irises. Irises which were absolutely black as pitch. He gave off an impression of just _barely_ restraining himself from killing you. Bear man had, with a huff of breath, like a bull gearing up to charge, turned over his shoulder (to regard the blond-haired boy) and spoken in that rib-rattle voice of his again:

'Let that be a lesson to you.'

Bear-man had noticed (with a scowl which would've sent Lo running if it had been directed at him) that blond-boy wasn't paying attention to him, he was looking past – at Lo. And only then had he turned back to Lo and Enitan, expression softening – into the merely terrifying. This was not a face which did friendly.

'N'ayez pas peur,' he had said, in absolute perfect French.

Don't be afraid? Ha!

Of course, that blonde boy was not Luke – Luke had only been little, back then, say three or four. No. This was... the other one.

Enitan had struggled to his feet, pulling Lo with him, gazing half-mad at this phantom, standing before them.

'Qui sont vous?' he had demanded to know, in a voice which (Lo was proud to remember) did not tremble. _Who are you?_

'Malachi de mon nom.' Bear-man had replied, with a ghost of a smile – like a grizzled old tiger, indulging a precocious cub. 'Malachi Enfield.'

And that was the head of the Enfield clan. A formidable man, Malachi. They called him The Hammer, back in Europe – once. Mal, goes to _Malleus_, as in _The Malleus Maleficarum_, the famous medieval hunter's handbook, "The Witches Hammer." Malachi Enfield was reportedly very fond of books, and had quite a collection. Some of the heavier ones, for example, were very handy for beating monsters to death with. Lo did not know, to this day, why Mal had taken he and Enitan under his wing. Maybe he saw potential there, in Enitan.

Anyway... Enitan had died, less than a year later, from a virus he had kept concealed, even from _him_, and he had ended up in Haiti, with his uncle and aunt. Actual benign, loving people, who cared for him, who would never sell him down the river. Enitan never got to see it, he died in the spare room of Malachi's countryside house, in Wales. A nice place. Just... bad memories.

Death had galvanised him, he acknowledged it well. Had it not been out of a desire to prove the worth of that which was Enitan's blood, in his veins, he would not have striven with the Hoodoo his mother taught him. He would never have slogged so hard, so long, making so many new connections, and moved to New Orleans. Using his craft to bring himself luck, prosperity, buying first one bar, then another, then another, branching out and rising up. By the time he was twenty, he could speak six languages – one of which was Money – and he owed the entire thing to the Enfields. So, yes, he was tired after spending all night and morning organizing Situations for them. Did he mind it? Not one bit.

Unfortunately, it was these thoughts, although admirable, which were Olufunmilola's downfall. He was so lost in this avenue of memory that he failed to realize what the crunching noise was... the crunch of claws, biting into brick, on the three-story high wall which divided his home from that which was next door...until it was too late. Dust was being shaken down as it pounded up, foot by foot, and before Lo could cry out, something huge and black _exploded_ through the glass above – there was a single panel of it, dividing _his_ barreled roof from _theirs – _and pounced through the air on him.

Lo muttered a charm, in Yoruba, as it fell – muscled arm raised up high, as if lifting an invisible heart to the sky, eyes blazing in outrage. How _dare_ it even _try? _The hound exploded into a million wisps of black smoke, dispersing in front of him in a mushroom cloud, oddly not strong enough to even damage the wall, now. There it ended. Or it would have. Except that Lo had forgotten one of the valuable lessons Malachi had taught him, roaming the British countryside with a pack of dogs in tow as they chased down something monstrous. Hounds are not the hunters. They scout ahead, they sniff out, they find, they may even devour: but ultimately, they serve something, someone, other than themselves.

So he didn't expect the dispersed black cloud to regroup on the opposite wall, behind his head, and lash out a tail – like a striking snake – which latched onto his head and engulfed him. It was huge, and powerful... powerful enough to overwhelm the charms he had woven against possession. To ignore the intricate filigree of lace-like tattoos he had placed, strategically, here and there about his body. A devil's trap here, a quincunx there. It was all to no avail. A link inextricably made, the thing, devil-thing, leeched itself into his body, through his nostrils, his gagging mouth, his ears – even his increasingly-bloodshot eyes.

And when Olufunmilola lowered his head, _there was no white, _in _his _black eyes.


End file.
